Sex and Murder Magazine

By Ken Goldman

The large digital clock blinked 2 A.M. outside the old Westport Stock Exchange while Desmond searched the sidewalks for his next big kick. He had walked the length of Market Street which, like himself, wore different colors by night than during working hours. The last of the tailored suits had left the business district hours before, replaced by the hustlers, junkers, prostitutes, and a mixed bag of night denizens. They took to the streets after dark like roaches slowly crawling out from their daylight crevices.

Desmond turned left on the corner of Third, a street suddenly awash in neon and noise, four blocks that comprised Westport's Combat Zone. A discordant chorus filled the night as the flesh peddlers pitched their jive at the marks who passed by, and the strip joints throbbed to the recorded accompaniment of moaning whore house saxes and bump-and-grind drum beats. Local cops had for years looked the other way regarding the Zone ever since Al Parkens had taken over as Police Commissioner and decided that busting prostitutes and their tricks was not the most expeditious use of his force in a town rife with real crime and real victims.

Desmond had been inside every parlor along Third Street and had climbed their staircases to the women who waited above in the dimly lit rooms. Few of them worked the Zone for very long, but even so he could have recognized many of the street's working girls blindfolded using only his sense of smell and his tongue. And often he had done just that.
But not tonight. Because tonight Desmond wanted something new and different, a real barn burner. If he could not find what he wanted on Third Street, it did not exist. He turned into the parlor at the far end of the strip with the GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! sign flashing in pulsating hot pink, buzzing neon. Although every window on Third featured variations of the same logo, this was Sid's place, and Sidney McPherson never disappointed.

If McPherson had not yet sold his soul to the devil, then he had no problem leasing it out nightly. Desmond had never seen him when he was not sweating, not even in the middle of winter. The man was a walking stain. Although fat, no one would ever have called Sidney jolly. Like every parlor on Third Street his had taken on a thick smell of sweat and piss, and so had he.
"Genuine leather?" he asked Desmond as he sniffed like a rodent at the sports jacket he wore. "Yeah, ‘course it is. I been around enough of this stuff to know the real article. Jesus, how much leather do you own?" He stroked the jacket's lining as if he were fondling one of his strippers.

"Enough to keep this store in business for the rest of the year," Desmond answered. "And I've got enough folding green in my pocket to keep you in business at least into next month. All you've got to do is make me smile." He pulled out a roll of twenties, and slapping them into McPherson's palm added, "Make me smile, Sid."

McPherson glanced at the money and shoved it into his vest pocket. Desmond did not doubt the man knew to the penny how much was in that wad simply by its weight.
"Got a new girl we're breakin' in, Des. Blond kid, doesn't know a soul in town, and tits out to here. You'll see her dancin' on the floor in the showroom. You just ask her and she'll do any—"

He stopped cold when Desmond again reached into his pocket and pulled out another roll, a smaller one. But this one was fifties. He handed the entire roll to McPherson and the man looked at him as if Desmond had decided to offer him a Christmas bonus in July. He licked his thumb, and examined a few of the bills, this time closely. For a moment he seemed to lose his breath.

"This is a lot of money," he finally said.

"I'd like you to make me smile a lot. Let's just say I've been bored and I need something to write home about."

"If I didn't know you any better—"

"—you'd think I was setting you up," Desmond finished. "But you do know me, don't you Sid? I've been coming here for months, and your girls could recite volumes on the games we play upstairs. You know I'm not interested in sticking any shit into my arm or up my nose, so let's eliminate those possibilities. And you know Al Parkens and the mayor don't give a rat's ass about what happens up those stairs so long as it doesn't make the morning headlines. So I don't think you need to lose much sleep over taking my money."

McPherson mulled over Desmond's words before he spoke. He lit a Marlboro and rubbed a handkerchief over his bald pate, then walked toward the stairway. Desmond knew the ritual well and followed.
"You want something different? Okay, Des, I'll give you something different, something like I swear you've never seen before. Something you're not likely to ever see nowhere, not even for this kind of money." He looked over his shoulder before continuing. "But this'll be a one shot offer, understand? Go up to the last room at the end of the hall. Just go in there and wait. Don't ask me no questions. And one more thing, Des…"

"What's that?"

"I'd rather you didn't write home about what you see," McPherson added as he swung the door open that led to the dark stairway.

He closed it the moment Desmond passed through. The street noise and showroom music faded behind him as he ascended the long staircase, but the smell remained. The hallway at the top was long and it ran the entire length of the building above the showroom. There were maybe a dozen single rooms along the hallway but no one lived in any of them. These were rooms meant for rentals measured in minutes, and when measured by that standard they constituted some of the highest real estate in town. A single bulb with a short chain lit the passageway, but its low wattage suggested this was not where faces were meant to be seen. He walked to the door at the end of the hall and turned the knob. The room inside was so dark Desmond did not expect to see the floor lamp glowing dimly by the window. He shut the door and stepped in.

"What the—?"

The room had no bed. He saw only a single cushioned chair that faced a large screen television, an expensive 60 inch Hitachi that took up the whole corner of the room, and a VCR on the floor. There wasn't even a sink, and Sid's girls always washed up before and after doing business. Sinks were McPherson's concession to the 90's. But this was not a room conducive to the old pearl dive into one of Sid's ladies of the night.

Watching fuck films all night had not been quite what Desmond had in mind. The McPherson private collection might do as an appetizer, but Desmond had come for a banquet. Of course Sid must have known that, so his skin flicks were probably only a prelude to some real action goin' down in this room. He examined the VCR to see if there were a tape in it, but it was empty. Seating himself before the blank screen Desmond waited. He could faintly hear the bass drums that accompanied the strippers' dance routines in the showroom below. They sounded like muffled heart beats.

The throbbing beat made him aware of his quickened heart rate and he smiled. Half the rush of being in the Zone was the anticipation of things to come, and he knew Sid would deliver. This was really what it was all about. You didn't get this kind of rush pushing stocks and bonds four blocks up Market when the sun was shining. Well, maybe you did occasionally when you whispered the right numbers into the right ears for a few dollars under the table. But the Westport Exchange wasn't Wall Street. And it sure as hell wasn't Third Street.

Twenty minutes later the Hitachi monitor suddenly flickered to life, but the screen did not display much worth seeing. A closed circuit camera fixed on a wide angle shot of a small room with a bed and a sink. After several minutes a croaking voice off-camera interrupted the silence.

"I hope you've made yourself comfortable, Des," the voice said, and Desmond immediately recognized it as McPherson broadcasting live, probably from a room on the same floor. "Sorry for the delay, buddy, but this shoot took a few minutes to set up. I had to get a girl to watch the store and I had to call in a favor or two from a pal of mine because you said you wanted something different. But as you can see I'm ready to roll the ol' camcorder. Got a hole punched into this closet door just big enough for this lens to catch all the action. Just sit back and relax. I think you're going to like this. It might take a few minutes before we—"

The door opened to the room shown on the TV monitor, and Sid quickly shut up. Maybe the sly bastard would be videotaping this without bothering to inform his stars. The man's got balls of steel, Desmond thought, leaning forward to enjoy the show.

He didn't recognize the busty blonde. Maybe she was the new kid Sid had mentioned. Her face looked like she could have still been in her teens, but Sid was pretty strict about hiring minors, so she probably was older. Her tight, black, silk, butt-hugging shorts stopped just below the crotch, and a purple tube top covered her breasts and nothing else. She was clearly one piece of ass, but then the showroom girls always were. Desmond would definitely check her out later. He wondered if she were in on Sid's little passion play.
The john was standard Third Street issue. Maybe a little young but typically unkempt, and the sloppy dagger-in-the-heart tattoo on his shoulder suggested Desmond probably would never bump into him on the floor of the stock exchange. The Brando-like undershirt he wore looked like it hadn't been changed in a week.

The girl took him by the hand to the bed, perhaps jockeying herself and her partner for a good camera angle. She ran her hands under his shirt, rolling it upwards as she scratched at and kneaded his chest.

"Say, Nicky, why don't we just get out of these clothes right now?" she purred close to his ear, and Desmond heard every word. Sid must have miked the entire room. The john sat on the side of the bed while the blonde unzipped his jeans and tugged at them, cooing and purring as she followed them down to the floor.

'Nicky' stroked the thick mane of blonde curls until the girl stepped back to yank his jeans completely off. For a moment she moved out of the range of the camera, and when she returned her clothes were gone. She crawled into the bed alongside her partner and he immediately took one of her breasts hungrily into his mouth.

"That's it…that's it," Desmond heard her say. "Just tell me how you like it and that's what we'll do. Oh, baby, baby, that's nice…that's so good, Nicky…Tell me what you want…"

Whore talk, Desmond thought. It never changed.

But ol' Nicky clearly was not into stating his requests. He simply moaned, and she climbed on top of him. Desmond watched amused, but so far he had seen this show before. The living element was a nice touch, but not especially creative on Sid's part if this were meant to be the whole performance. Desmond yawned and watched the hooker and her trick go at each other for another ten minutes.

When the two finished Desmond waited for the screen to go dark. For the first time he heard Nick talk, although the words sounded slurred and out of sync with the john's former behavior.

"Please don't get dressed just yet," he said to her with forced politeness. "You never told me your name."

"Crystal. Just Crystal," the girl said tiredly, her back toward the man in bed. The tone of the hooker's voice had radically changed, indicating that the meter had run out. "That was a real E-Ticket ride, honey, but the ride is over," she added while searching for her panties through the pile of clothes on the chair.

The TV screen also showed what the girl could not see happening behind her. The john had leaned over to the far side of the bed and reached for something under the mattress. At first Desmond could not figure what the man might have hidden there nor how he had hidden it, but when he held the object in clear view of the camera the answer suddenly became clear.

…and Desmond's mouth suddenly went dry.

As the girl slid into her panties, directly behind her the man in the bed held a gleaming hunting knife high above him. He pointed at it with his other hand so that Desmond could see it clearly on the TV monitor, then ran his thumb along the saw-toothed cutting edge and held up his bloody thumb for the camera. Desmond knew the next scene on the television screen had been clearly intended for his benefit.

…because the girl didn't know it.

Playing to the camera behind her back as if performing some sort of insane vaudeville routine, Nick threw the knife from hand to hand, slapping the handle loudly against each palm when he caught it. Still the girl did not turn toward him.

Desmond leaned forward in the chair and found it hard to breathe.

"Well, Crystal," Nick finally said, slowly, as if reading from scripted dialogue, "since you were so nice to me, I have something I'd like to give to you. Do you like surprises?"

Desmond winced at the sick joke. He could see Crystal force a smile as she turned away from the camera toward the guy in the bed. He could only imagine how quickly that smile disappeared.

Nick held the long serrated blade right in front of her face and grinned. The girl's hands reflexively covered her chest before she spoke.

"What are you doing with—?"

The camera angle on the screen suddenly shifted as Sid stepped out from his hiding place in the closet to get a closer shot. Crystal spun toward the lens of the camcorder.

"We're rolling, sweetheart," Nick said, distracting her into looking back at him. "No, don't look at me! We'd like you to face the camera again for us…That's a good girl."

Crystal again spun toward the camcorder, and this time she was angry. "This is real funny, guys. But if you want to jerk yourselves off with this sadomasochistic bullshit, go out and rent a movie, okay?" She looked directly into the camera's eye with a twitching smile that suggested she didn't quite get the joke and was not amused, then returned to the pile of clothes on the chair. "Look, I really don't have time for—"

Before she completed her sentence Nick had already sprung out of the bed and came up behind her. He grabbed a handful of the girl's hair and pulled her neck back with a snap, exposing her throat to the camera. He held the saw-toothed blade directly under her chin while his eyes bulged like an insect's.

"Scream, why don't you? We only get to do one take on this," he snarled into her ear. He dragged her closer to Sid's camera. "Begging works good too. You want to try some of that?" he added as Crystal struggled in his grasp. He sliced a thin red line across the girl's slender neck and she shrieked like a terrified animal. The camera angle veered wildly as Sid readjusted for the closer shot.

Desmond's mouth opened and he leaned forward toward the monitor.

"Please…" the girl begged. "Oh please, don't…"

She screamed. And screamed again.

Desmond felt his stomach twist and turn on itself. He jumped to his feet and shouted at the screen. "Sid, you sick fuck! Don't do it! What in the name of Christ are you—?"

He spun on his feet and froze where he stood. The girl's screams had come from some other place than the monitor, somewhere near. But with that damned noise downstairs who would hear her? Her screams suddenly sputtered into cold silence as if the television's sound had been cut off. Desmond turned back to the monitor.

Nick had pulled the knife hard against her neck, slicing into it so deeply that the girl could only gurgle weakly. The blood first bubbled, then spurted from her throat into the camera lens. He had severed her tongue by cutting her throat, and the blood-soaked gobbet spilled from the corner of her mouth. Her body went completely limp in Nick's grasp, and when he propped her up in front of him for the camera she lay against his chest like a twisted doll. He looked into the camera; his face speckled with the girl's blood, and beamed a smile at the camera that was all teeth.

That was the last image Desmond saw in the monitor. The blood-soaked camera lens had smeared the picture screen and dropped a curtain on the scene he had watched. Minutes after he had slammed his hand hard against the TV monitor to snap off the picture Desmond could still hear Sid laughing wildly behind his camera. The noise ricocheted inside his head and he pressed both palms hard against his ears, but the laughter did not go away, and the sound of the girl's screams did not go away. He buried his face in his hands and pictured the two men roaring with laughter as the girl thumped to the floor.

But Sid was no longer behind his camera in the room down the hall. He had come to the doorway and stood in front of Desmond with a videotape in his hand.

"You got a headache, Des?" he asked, closing the door behind him as if he were just a pal paying a friendly visit.

Desmond grabbed his shoulder and stopped him before he sat in the room's only chair.

"Jesus Christ, Sid! Do you have any idea of what you just did? Are you out of your fucking—?"

"We made one hell of a mess down the hall," McPherson interrupted, ignoring Desmond's words. "But I promised you a show, and here it is." He handed the tape to Desmond, who stared at it like McPherson had just injected the same hand with Novocain. "Something really different, just like the man said. I know my customers better than you may think, Des. Of course if you want to see something really different you might want to check out my friend Nicholas acting out tonight's denouement. That Parkens kid is one crazy fuck."

Parkens kid. The name took a moment to register. "Al Parkens' son?" Desmond asked dully, his head throbbing with pain. "Nick Parkens is the police commissioner's—?"

"Hell, yes!" McPherson answered. "That's why I wouldn't go showing that video around. There isn't a cop in this town who doesn't know what a nutzoid the guy is, but they protect their own. I've known for years that kid'll try just about anything to give himself a jump start. You never know what he'll do next. Guess I'm in no position to talk. I put the crazy bastard on video. 'Course he doesn't usually look so scruffy, but I always fix him up for the camera so he'd be hard to spot. Even drew that tattoo on his shoulder. I hated to lose that new blonde cheese puff, though. She showed some promise. But she wasn't around long enough that anyone would miss her. She never told nobody she was here, probably even gave me some phony ID, so she was really the only choice. Still, I'm glad it's been a slow night up here. We wouldn't want anyone else to get wind of what went on, especially since the show's not entirely over. Which reminds me…" He motioned to the room down the hall. "You might want to look at this."

"You're out of your goddamned mind if you think I'm going into—"

McPherson had already stepped into the hallway and turned to Desmond. "Then shut this door when you leave, would you? I got an expensive VCR in here." When Desmond stepped out a moment later he knew he would find McPherson standing just outside the door. Sid must have known he was not ready to go back down to Third Street, and Desmond showed no desire to stand in the hallway either. He breathed deeply, and without a word followed McPherson to the room at the other end of the hall, the tape still in his hand. Sid opened the door and Desmond entered first.

Nicholas Parkens sat sprawled on the floor over the blonde girl's body, a can of beer in one hand as if he were at a picnic. He looked up at the two men and smiled as blood dribbled down his chin. His mouth was stuffed with whatever he had been chewing, and when Desmond looked at the girl on the floor he noticed that her chest had been torn open. He looked at what Nick Parkens held in his other hand and saw that it was the girl's heart.

"He'll have her finished before morning," Sid said. "He usually goes for the face next."

For only a moment Desmond felt his stomach churn, but the feeling passed quickly, replaced by an entirely different sensation. He took a few deep breaths and realized that, yes, he was feeling better now. Much better. Experiencing the scene in the flesh, being in the same room as what he had seen, had put the night into its proper perspective. Although his heart raced inside his chest, the sudden exhilaration felt good and made him feel alive. The familiar rush of anticipation had returned, and it told him that this was what it was all about. This could be the next big kick.

Slipping the videotape into his leather jacket, Desmond watched the police commissioner's son enjoying his meal. He turned back to McPherson and said, "Let me borrow that camcorder for just a few minutes…"