by Pat Nolan

Chapter Thirty Four
ESCAPE

I reeled like a sapling in the wake of a tornado. My legs went weak, knees about to buckle. How long had I been standing there? An eternity? The man in the wheelchair grasping at his chest in agony focused all attention on his drama. Bodyguards set up a perimeter and Tommy Junior’s voice shouted out above the confusion for an ambulance. A rough hand grabbed me by the arm to keep me from collapsing.

I couldn’t focus. I had projected my entire being at the old devil and now there was nothing left of me. I was empty. The hand, the shoulder, the arm around my waist, the feet striding quickly, purposefully out of the spotlight and backstage belonged to Blackie. My eyes fought the encroaching dark and my skin turned cold. Then I realized that we were outside and I wasn’t dressed for evening. I was barely able to put one foot in front of the other.

Blackie half carried half dragged me behind a sheltering row of vines. I was limp as a rag doll. He shook me roughly. “Come on, Malone, snap out of it!”  His anxious face multiplied in a blur like the spinning dial of a telephone. Finally he heaved me over a shoulder and jogged to behind the pump house where he had hidden his motorcycle. He took a black bandana from the pocket of his jacket and tied one end around my wrist. Numbly I complied with his instructions to climb onto the seat behind him. He pulled my arms around his waist and tied the end of the bandana to my other wrist. He pointed the bike downhill and coasted to a point where the engine came to life with an earsplitting roar. Helpless, my head pressed against the slab of his black leather back, arms bound around his waist. I should have been afraid but my instincts told me to trust the old man, trust him the way I had trusted an old woman not so long ago.

The screaming apparition of an emergency vehicle, flashing red lights blazing, passed in the opposite direction on the darkened road.

I just wanted to curl up somewhere warm, soft, safe and quiet. Instead I was on the back of a noisy chopper with a gale force wind blowing through my skimpy blouse and up my long skirt. And I was on the down slide, the price I had to pay for my extraordinary power. I’d been there before, guided through my initiation by Trayann, and allowed to right my tumbled world before the blazing hearth of her stone hut with a bowl of herb tea, listening to the murmured litany that would help ease me out of the depths of my autism.

“I am chaos, I am order. I am she whose smile induces forgetfulness. I am the vessel of dreams, she who turns the year round its axis. I am the claw of night, the sigh of all time, silence incomprehensible.”

I had gone looking for the old woman after the hubbub of my rescue by the Prince’s commandos had died down. I’d hired a fisherman from Sardinia to ferry me back to the black sand beach. Everything was gone, every trace of the women, of SAPHO, had been eradicated. The villa was in a state of disrepair that would have taken centuries to accomplish. Trayann’s stone hut, a pile of time worn rubble, and the once raging stream, dubbed Milk of the Goddess, an anemic trickle. I stood on the deserted black sand beach and looked up at where the villa had been, remembering the names of the women I had become friends with, the women who had changed my life. Xuxann, Urann, Roxann, Choann, Reiann, Mariann, Elann, Diann, Belann. And above all, Trayann.

“I am the vibrant virgin, the fertile female, the wizened hag. I am the primal force, the mist in the trees, rosy-fingered dawn. I am truth. I am beauty. I am the first and the last, the honored and the scorned, the holy and the whore, the virgin and the wife, the daughter and the mother.”

In the weeks after I had witnessed Trayann’s performance I completed my initiation into an ancient sisterhood whose ubiquity is its camouflage. Every woman has life shaping power, the power over life and death. Once this truth is acknowledged, the ancient technique, known in French as la Folle, or as Xuxann liked to call it, Femme Fu, ‘crazy woman,’ is relatively easy to learn. Of course, it helps if you have a heart stopping body like mine. However, it can only be used as the last resort.

The screaming apparition of an emergency vehicle, flashing red lights blazing, passed in the opposite direction on the darkened road. In the wake of its oscillating wail I could still hear Trayann’s voice.

“I am knowledge and ignorance, shameless and ashamed, strong yet weak, fearful yet fearless. I am foolish. I am wise. I am the child at every birth, the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral. I am the many. I am the one. I am the labyrinth.” 

Teeth chattering, I was fully alert by the time Blackie brought his bike to a stop in the alley behind his motorcycle repair shop. He untied the bandana and led me to the back entrance. All of Timberton was in the dark, another power outage apparently. Once inside Blackie found a kerosene lamp and lit it. He took a bottle down from a shelf and poured each of us a stiff drink in coffee mugs. When the whiskey hit my gut, it was like a little sun had exploded, sending its warm rays out to my extremities. I studied Blackie’s craggy lined face in the warm glow of the oil lamp.

“OK, I think you need to tell me what’s going on.”

He shrugged. “You know about as much as I do.”

“No, no, that doesn’t cut it.”  The drink had put fire in my veins. “You need to tell me what you were doing there, at the Winery. “

Blackie stared at the wall behind me, his lips pursed like he wanted to tell me but hadn’t figured out how to say it.

“Come on, Blackie, you can tell me. What were you doing there? You certainly weren’t on their team, not the way they manhandled you.”

He bobbed his chin in agreement. “Actually, I was keeping tabs on you.” Blackie registered my surprise with a sly grin.

“I don’t get it. You were stalking me?”

He shook his head and sighed. In the dim light of the lamp he appeared older, tired. “You remind me an awful lot of her.” He pointed to the picture of Arlene on the wall. “She was a feisty one, too.” That brought a hint of a smile to the lines around his mouth. “You wouldn’t listen to me when I said you needed to keep your nose out of this business. I knew you’d eventually bump into trouble. You have no idea how ruthless these guys are. Everything you said to JJ about the murders and your suspicions was relayed to Junior.”

“Joyce James, that bitch!”

“The way I see it, torching your cabin was a warning. You were supposed to back off. But you wouldn’t take the hint. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you flitting through the vine rows. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what you were up to. When you disappeared into the warehouse I knew you were just plain stupid.”  He paused to light a cigarette. “Then stupid followed stupid.”

I was about to answer when the power came back on. I nearly jumped out of my skin.   “Hey, nothing to be scared of,” Blackie said, laughing at the panic in my eyes, “it’s only a little electricity.”

If I had been a man, my actions would have been viewed as ballsy. As a woman, I was just stupid. My lack of caution made me reckless, not brainless. I shrugged it off. “Did you know what was going on at the Winery, the auctions?”

Blackie drained more of the bottle into his cup. His hand was shaking. “I had a pretty good idea that if it involved Tommy and his kids, it was probably no good. I keep a low profile where Tommy Perro’s concerned. He knows, and I know, that if I ever got him alone I’d wring his scrawny neck. I’m not interested in going back to jail.”  He stared down at his cup.

“I know about your time in prison, Blackie, that’s not what concerns me. What’s your connection to Tommy and the boys?”

Blackie drew on his cigarette and let the smoke out slowly. “Ok, if you know about my time in the pen, then you probably know why.”  I nodded and he continued. “Imagine my surprise when I got out and found Arlene with a couple of kids. And living with Tommy! Well, I didn’t care nothing about that. It was gonna be a fresh start, her and me. Like nothing had happened.”  He frowned remembering. “We’d talked about quitting the business and heading up to the Corkscrew River before. Arlene, she was all for it, but she couldn’t leave the boys with Tommy.” He shook his head. “He was too coked up or smacked out. Unpredictable, irresponsible. He was leaving his shit lying around where the rug rats could get at it. It was a real horror show I found when I got out of the slam.”

“So you moved here with Arlene and the boys. Didn’t Tommy come looking for you, to take the boys back?”

Blackie’s look told me I’d touched a sore spot. “Yeah, he come looking for Arlene,” he said slowly as if it were a strain to talk about it. “Took his damn time. She was set to enroll the boys in elementary school and all of a sudden he shows up and says he’s taking custody cause she’s an unfit mother being a porn actress and all. He had the brass to claim she was immoral yet here he was a big time drug dealer and porno pimp. Good thing I was gone or I would for sure have wacked his sorry ass!”

“Where were you?”

“Ah, I had to go back east, Boston, to help with my mother’s funeral arrangements. And there were other family matters that needed sorting out so I was gone longer than I figured. When I got back, Arlene, she was in pretty bad shape and I was ready to go after Tommy and put a bullet in his knobby little skull. But Arlene wouldn’t have it. It wouldn’t bring the boys back, she said. Tommy had the lawyers and the money so we couldn’t fight it that way.”

“And that was the last time you saw the twins?”

Blackie looked at me from behind the pain in his eyes. “I thought I’d seen the last of them. They’d been a handful anyway, and I don’t have much patience with misbehaving and disrespect. The way they treated Arlene always made me mad. I was ready to give them a thrashing more than once but Arlene wouldn’t have it. But with them gone, we had some kind of peace.” The lines around his eyes relaxed as he recalled the tranquility. “Then, half a dozen or so years later, out of the blue, Timmy showed up. He’d got himself into a jam down south and needed a place to lie low. I didn’t want anything to do with him, but Arlene, she put him up in the spare bedroom. Let me tell you, it was no picnic. He was a wild one, but the way Arlene fussed about him you woulda thought he was the Prince of Siam. I had him help me out in my shop to try to keep him out of trouble. Had a knack for the machines, I’ll say that for him.” Blackie glanced around the shop as if the deep shadows concealed the memories. “But one day, he just left, didn’t say a word. Disappeared like he’d never been there. Arlene took it hard as you might expect. Me, I just couldn’t figure what made him tick. I got an idea about a week after the boy took off. Santos, the local deputy at the time come looking for Timmy. Seemed that the cops suspected him of setting grass fires, one of which burned down a house. Well, Arlene wouldn’t believe it when they told us and of course I took her side seeing as how I never had no love for the police. They took me down to the substation for interfering with an officer of the law.”  Blackie scoffed at the memory.

“So Timmy was the evil twin?” Blackie’s story was making me sad. I wanted to comfort him, but his stiff manner wouldn’t allow it.

“If you ask me, they’re both evil. I thought I’d seen the last of them. About then is when Arlene took sick. And that was mostly what was on my mind. Caring for her.”  His eyes got glassy and he looked away.

“That must have been when Rhonda moved up here, right? Arlene must have been comforted to have her old friend nearby.”

Blackie frowned. “No, Arlene passed before any of them showed up again. First it was young Tommy, throwing money around and buying up property and planting vineyards. Changed his name to Montague. He come by once, just to check me out. I didn’t see much of him after that. And then Timmy come by. Had himself a chopper. Wanted to use my shop to work on his bike.” Blackie sighed. “Can’t say I was too welcoming. Considering.”

I was puzzled. “So Rhonda. . . ?”

Blackie shook his head. “Me and Rhonda never did get along once the whole dirty movie business started. I always figured she was the one who got Tommy going in that direction. And the way she treated Arlene, like she was her maid. I know she’s got a cabin in your neck of the woods, but her and Tommy Perro, I stay out of their way.”

Something was not adding up. “I have a confession to make, Blackie.”

He smiled, relieved to be pulled from his dark reverie.

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“I suspected that you set fire to my cabin. I was told that a motorcycle was heard in the neighborhood before the fire was discovered.”

Blackie fixed me with a stare, brow stepped with concern. “Who told you they heard a motorcycle?”

I was about to answer when the power came back on. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Hey, nothing to be scared of,” Blackie said, laughing at the panic in my eyes, “it’s only a little electricity.”

I had easily recovered from the surprise of the sudden bright light. The apparition in the doorway was the cause of my saucer eyes. Timmy beamed an evil grin at Blackie’s back. And behind Timmy stood Rhonda. The square black thing in her hand was a pistol.

Chapter Thirty Five
A FAMILY AFFAIR

I was speechless, I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Not that the situation required me to say anything. Rhonda, gun in hand, was clearly in control. My head was spinning. It felt like I was having post-hallucinatory hallucinations. The way my gut dive-bombed told me that it was all too real.

Blackie blurted, “Rhonda? Timmy? What?” before Rhonda cut him off.

“Shut up Blackie, and keep your hands where I can see them.”  There was a remorseless feline cruelty to her eyes.

And I finally got a good look at the surviving occupant of the gray van. As my prime suspect in the murder of Hitler, Goldberg’s Airedale, and presumably Creasy’s pup, he had epitomized the sense of wrongness, of evil, in this whole affair. What I saw was a greasy sadistic pipsqueak in a motorcycle jacket holding a big shotgun.

It must have been the adrenaline contributing to the dryness of my mouth and the sense that my back had arched. I locked eyes with Rhonda. The way she twisted her mouth into a haughty smirk. I recognized it. Timmy was making a similar one and I didn’t think it was because they had both attended the same smirk class. The resemblance between Rhonda and Timmy, and by extension Tommy, was striking. That was only slightly troubling. It was the resemblance between Rhonda and the old man in the wheelchair, Tommy Perro that had me gasp in surprise. My puzzlement resolved in a flash of intuition. She was the brains behind Pa. And she was his sister or a very close relative.

I was looking at a pistol and a shotgun yet I felt like I had the upper hand. “I think you just confirmed that I do know what I’m talking about. Tommy Perro is your brother.”

I blinked. Rhonda sensed that I knew. For that, I would have to pay. “And you, you meddling bitch.” She crossed the short distance between us and hit me in the face with the pistol. It wasn’t a blow that was intended to hurt as much as intimidate. I felt the skin on my cheekbone split and put my hand up to meet the swelling. I looked at the blood on my fingers. The sight of blood, especially my own, always makes me faint. I tottered.

Blackie moved to catch me but Timmy read it differently and clubbed him with the butt end of the shotgun. Blackie dropped to his knees and then fell full face forward to the concrete floor. I caught the edge of the work bench and held myself up until the wave of nausea passed. I focused on the photos Blackie had pinned on the wall, the old photos of Rhonda and Tommy and Blackie and Arlene. The old gang, the original porn crew, the youthful clan of sybarites grouped in sibling camaraderie.

Timmy left off kicking Blackie at Rhonda’s caution. “We don’t want to kill him. Just yet.”

A crimson halo spread from Blackie’s head across the cement floor and I felt a cramp in my gut that told me I was going to heave. I dug my nails into the wood of the workbench. I swallowed hard. “So you’re the mother of the twins,” I said finally, swaying to keep my balance.

Rhonda gave a sardonic cackle. “Of course, the twins are mine. There was never any doubt of that.”

“But Arlene, she was supposed to be the mother,” I managed as the room slowed its spin.

“You’ve got that right. She was supposed to be.” Rhonda scoffed. “If you must know, miss busybody, not that it’s going to do you any good, Arlene was supposed to act like they were her kids while I was doing time in the slammer. She claimed to be their mother so they wouldn’t end up in a foster home. I didn’t want that to happen to my babies. I know what that’s like. I love my babies.” And she gave Timmy a little maternal smile of affection, seductive in its controlling power. Timmy, in turn, frowned the troubled frown of a momma’s boy whose leash had just been tugged.

Rhonda felt a need to explain. “I was doing time when Blackie got out of prison. Once he hooked up with Arlene again, she left Tommy and took the kids with her. Tommy didn’t care, he’d become strung out on his own product. So when I got out on parole I wanted to know where my kids were. In the meantime, Tommy had become quite wealthy and greedy and thought he could write me out of the script. I had news for him.”  She said it, lips pursed in ruthless resolve.

“But you told me. . .”  I stopped. I wasn’t sure what she’d told me, there were too many loose ends.

“That’s the problem with beautiful women, they’re so gullible. The more beautiful, the more gullible. And fashion models like you think they’re better than the rest. Face it, honey, to men you’re just a piece of meat. Less than that. A picture of a piece of meat. You’re what they want. I’m what they get.” There was a bitter truth to what she was saying.    “Sure, I had to play it straight, but all the while I was working behind the scenes, managing the finances, letting Tommy be the front. I diversified. He kept the girlie concession. He always was a horny little bastard.”

“And you’ve known that since you were a little kid.”

It was her turn to blink. I knew I had got to her by the stormy furtive look she threw Timmy’s way. Timmy was clueless as I imagined he’d always been, a puppet tied to his mother’s apron string. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I was looking at a pistol and a shotgun yet I felt like I had the upper hand. “I think you just confirmed that I do know what I’m talking about. Tommy Perro is your brother.”  It was a leap but her clouded brow told me I’d hit the mark. Timmy stiffened as if stung, the dim light behind his eyes suddenly bright.

“You think you’re so clever. Here’s something you don’t know. One of the original investors in my little business venture, the guy who showed me how to launder money, set up a dummy corporation, branch out into international markets, do you know who that was?” She was certain I didn’t have a clue and she was right. A shiver of fear rippled up my spine. “The guy who owned the cabin you lived in, your sainted step-father, Frank Zola.”

Timmy might have just as well hit me in the gut with the butt of his shotgun. “Frank was involved in all of this?”  Now I was really going to puke.

“Dad is your brother?” Timmy was looking at his mother, head cocked to one side, confusion darkening his features. “You’re my aunt? He’s my. . .uncle?”

“Now Timmy, honey, don’t listen to her.” She made a move toward him as if to comfort him. He leveled the shotgun at her. It wasn’t so much a threat as something that would keep her at arm’s length while he mulled over the ambiguity of the situation. Once he had been so sure of himself and now he felt betrayed.

“Timmy,” Rhonda repeated, pleading.

“No, mom, I gotta figure this out on my own.”  It went with an angry pout. It didn’t last long.

Blackie had come to or he’d been playing possum. Either way, he managed to rise to his knees and throw his body against Timmy’s legs, knocking the boy down which in turn triggered the shotgun. The blast hit Rhonda on the left side just as she got off a round striking Blackie in the back. She was thrown backwards, taking the oil lamp with her. It shattered on the concrete floor sending flaming oil in all directions. Timmy’s legs were pinned under the weight of Blackie’s body.

Stunned, my ears ringing, I stumbled over to help Blackie. I glanced at Rhonda and caught the wicked gleam in her crazed eyes just as she raised the pistol and fired. My entire body stiffened, seized with pain, before I collapsed to the floor. Runnels of burning kerosene had reached a pile of greasy rags catching them on fire and filling the workshop with choking smoke. Timmy freed himself and crawled toward the doorway. A huge orange flame roared up from the cans of solvent stacked behind Rhonda. She was engulfed by fire in an instant as surely as if she had been sucked into the gates of Hell. A cacophony of voices filled my head, shrill voices, siren voices, swimming toward me as I closed my eyes. I didn’t care anymore. I was too far gone.

Next Time: The Conclusion. “I Ran, I Rock!”

by Pat Nolan

Chapter Thirty Two
WONDERING WOMAN

I felt something touch my arm at the elbow. It was cold and hot at the same time. Then I lost consciousness. When I came to, my hands were tied behind my back and I had that horrible feeling of déjà vu. The last time I’d been in a similar situation, I had been found face down on the floor of my cell at Sabbia Negru by Mohamed el-Ipir of the Prince’s security force, the purple swelling of a bruise under one eye.

In that instance, everything had to be made to appear as if I had been mistreated. I had been recognized and word of my whereabouts revealed. The women of SAPHO had no choice but to clear out. Besides, I had served my purpose. My captors, if it was up to me, would remain anonymous, a mystery to the world at large.

I had been smeared with dirt and Xuxann had reluctantly, though forcefully, poked a fist in my face. Then I had been fitted with a gag but not so tight that I couldn’t swallow or breathe. Hours later I heard the churning rotors of a helicopter and felt the tiny cell shake with the nearby vibrations as it touched down. I had been rescued, I realized then, by the very men who wished to keep me prisoner.

This time I wasn’t gagged and my cheek was resting on the cool black leather of a couch in a dimly lit room. From the ornate desk at one end, it appeared to be some kind of executive office suite. As my eyes blinked and found focus, the circumstances that had landed me in this fix overtook me in a rush of detail.

          I had been standing on the balcony off the mezzanine of the faux castle admiring the view and accepting that I would soon be bathed in a chemical stew altering my perception with heightened awareness. Already the edges of the landscape had become noticeably vibrant. The live oaks shimmered with golden intensity as day waned. In the distance I made out a metal sided warehouse encircled by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire, and, barely visible just above the roofline, the gridded arc of a satellite dish. I had seen a similar one at the Prince’s chateau outside Paris.  Again my curiosity led me down the speculative path. Why would a warehouse have a satellite dish and be surrounded by such a barbed wire perimeter? Why were limousines arriving with what appeared to be a scheduled regularity and its occupants ushered, not into the charity event in the castle, but into the warehouse? Why were they all men? I imagined Tommy Perro alias Tommy Montague holding a high stakes poker game to recoup his contribution to charity.

I was in a wondering mood. I wondered why I was looking for the exit that would take me out to the rear of the castle. And when I found it and walked out to the edge of the grassy terrace, I wondered how close I could get to the warehouse without appearing conspicuous. The rows of vines luxuriant with early August foliage ran parallel to the warehouse and looked like they might provide adequate cover. I wondered if the posted signs that read Warning, Grounds Patrolled by Security Dogs really meant what they said.

Barefoot is not always the best way to walk through a vineyard, but engulfed by the lushness of the vines, the tart aroma of the ripening clusters, and the organic breath of the warm tilled earth, my feet didn’t seem to be touching the ground.

As I suspected, the chain link fence blocked closer access. The warehouse was a formidable structure, no mere storage facility. I heard a succession of sharp barks around the back and voices yelling at the dogs to shut up. Ducking under a few vine rows I saw two men in dark suits. They were chauffeurs if most of my life spent in limos was any judge. And they were taking a smoke break. Two large Dobermans in the nearby kennel, alert to their presence, snapped out challenges. A door opened at the back of the building and a man in what appeared to be a uniform stepped out and added his authority to the demands that they be quiet. The dogs dropped obediently to their haunches. When the men finished smoking, they crushed their cigarette ends with the soles of their polished shoes and reentered the warehouse.

Normally cautious, though some would dispute that claim, I felt a fierce recklessness surge within me. I made a dash for the door as soon as it closed behind the drivers. The dogs raised a howl as I suspected they would. I crouched down on the hinge side of the door, my back pressed against the metal siding. The door swung open and the voice of authority in black military-style boots stepped down onto the concrete pad and shouted them into submission. The dogs returned to their haunches but reluctantly. They could see me behind the door but he couldn’t. As the door swung slowly shut on its pneumatic hinge, I picked up a chunk of oak twig from the ground litter and jammed it into the closing gap. It was just enough to keep the latch from catching. I gave myself time to take a couple of deep breaths and then cracked the door open a few inches. Once my eyes adjusted to the dim light inside, I made out a long corridor that ended in wide auditorium double doors. I heard muffled voices and laughter coming from the security post, a closed sliding glass window over a half wall, the door to the small office also closed, just inside the entrance. Like a white mouse in a maze I crouched low and hugged the wall making my way to where I thought there might be cheese. There was a burst of hearty laughter and then a low voice of accented English with East European intonations spoke. Bulgarian immediately popped into my ultra-conscious mind.

When I reached the double doors, I discovered stairways flanking them and leading up to a balcony. I heard the sound of music, the kind with a grinding backbeat. I padded up the carpeted stairway on all fours keeping my head low. I peered into the near dark of the empty balcony. Bright light splashed over the railing from below. I gazed down onto a small amphitheater with a runway jutting out from the proscenium. A young Asian woman in high spiked heels and little else did her version of the model-strut. Shortly she was followed by a tall leggy blonde in an outfit that consisted of fringe draped from her broad shoulders. A man in a tuxedo at the back of the stage called out a name and a number, first in English, then in Arabic, and then in Japanese. My gaze widened to take in the men in the shadows seated along the edge of the runway. Their attention was not a leering lust, but the focused appraisal reserved for merchandise.

I’d seen that look myself many times before as I had swung my hips to the end of the runway, haughty and saucy, decked out in the latest fashion in New York, Paris, Milan, and Budapest. What I was witnessing was a parody of my life as a model. Only a few select men could have me, and only on my terms. The male fantasies of the world turned to surrogates, women who would serve their desires while I remained pure and unattainable.

I felt something touch my arm at the elbow. It was cold and hot at the same time and I lost consciousness. I moaned involuntarily as I came to and tried to make sense of my surroundings. My moan was greeted by a growl and I was suddenly aware of the bared dripping canines of a guard dog staring me in the face. My instinct was to play dead, close my eyes and let my head drop back against the leather couch. I tried to keep my breathing shallow but my heart was pounding like a runaway piston. Then it took a leap.

Overhead lights blazed on. I heard men’s voices approaching. I cautiously opened one eye to a pitiless glare of bright artificial white. They were standing over me. I recognized one face immediately. I should have guessed. It was Blackie.

Chapter Thirty Three
A BURST OF POWER

The scowl on Blackie’s face said he wasn’t happy to see me. I almost burst out laughing. Not because I didn’t grasp the tight spot I was in, but because of the absolute hilarity of what had just occurred to me. It was that delicious line once spoken by Mae West: “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”  The gun wasn’t in Blackie’s pocket, it was in his back. He stumbled forward, pushed from behind. The gun was in Tommy Junior’s hand. His lips were stretched across his teeth in a smile. It wasn’t a happy smile.

I’ve been told that a woman with a sense of humor is dangerous. Men consider laughter, the only emotion they dare express, to be their inviolable domain. Once again I was where I wasn’t supposed to be, doing what I wasn’t supposed to be doing. And I was surrounded by men, all bristling with ambiguous hostility. Behind young Tommy, a limp withered figure glared from a wheelchair. Behind the wheelchair stood Preston Carmichael. The wizened apparition’s right hand moved, bringing a pale plastic wand to its throat. It wasn’t much of a leap, but I knew immediately that I was looking at old man Montague, aka Tommy Perro. A metallic sound crackled from the wand and shaped into words, “Must be my lucky day.”

Tommy Perro’s hard eyes had no intention of smiling. The skin beneath his cavernous eyes hung like folds of mottled vinyl. “My old pal, Blackie, come to visit me, and he brought his girlfriend, the most beautiful woman in the world.”  His laugh sounded like static.

Tommy Junior managed a sneer, “Once the most beautiful, don’t you mean? You have to admit she’s got a few miles on her.”

“A woman is not an automobile.” Preston spoke in his measured tone, his wan cheeks slack but his amber eyes calculating. “Like a fine wine, certain vintages will age to perfection. And this one will bring a price to rival anything on four wheels.”

The old cripple wheeled closer to the couch where I no longer pretended to be unconscious. My heightened awareness enlarged my vision. My eyes felt like they were the size of dinner plates. I was one beat ahead of everything going down. It seemed all so very predictable. Except for the Doberman, tensed, ready to lunge at a word, and incidentally, the only other female in the room.

“I get payback, from my old buddy Blackie for ripping my family apart, and as a bonus, something that will be the prize of some sultan’s collection. It’s my lucky day.”

“I’m afraid she’s already spoken for.” Preston’s tone was firm. “I have an exclusive contract with a certain party for the finest of Caucasian flesh, particularly of Circassian ancestry.”

The old man turned in his wheelchair in a way that looked both painful and menacing. It was a demand for explanation.

“In the late seventies, I had been asked to arrange to have a certain fashion model with a notorious reputation entertain a very wealthy and politically powerful man at his villa on the Caspian Sea. Enroute to this assignment she was intercepted and kidnapped by a gang of terrorists. Lee Malone, once the highly sought-after international beauty, Leeann, is still very much a prize. This is my opportunity to restore credibility with my client.”  Preston pulled a small pistol from under his dinner jacket and pointed it at Junior. “I’m afraid I shall have to take possession of her. You can deal with your friend as you must.” Being a lawyer, Carmichael relied heavily on the bluff.

Tommy Perro had gone to a different law school. The old man rasped a noise through his wand and the Doberman launched like a brown projectile at the dapper lawyer. Preston fired, hitting the dog in midflight. At the same time, Junior fired his pistol.

For a minute I thought I was on the set of the Maltese Falcon: men in dinner jackets with gats. And it happened instantly, inexorably, no close ups, no wide angles, overhead or tracking shots, just bang, bang, bang, one, two, three, by the numbers, the last round fired in reflex as Preston dropped like an expensive Pelure Cochon leather sack, fashionable but empty. One dead dog and one dead man. Tommy Junior spun and pointed his gun at Blackie who looked like he might be contemplating something gallant but stupid.

The old man may have been constrained by his physical condition but his barked electronic commands were dispatched with authority. He had some very valuable property and he was certain that there were those who would pay a tidy sum to acquire it.

I was hustled down to the auditorium and taken backstage by the security muscle, a scowling ape with a shaved head and glowing red eyes. I should have been frightened. Instead I felt fearless, as if I was inhabited by another entity, a truly powerful being bursting with supernatural energy.

The ringmaster reappeared to adjust the lighting and check the sound system. He asked with a grin if I was having a good time. Then he asked me if there was any particular music I preferred for my walk down the plank. He indicated the row of cassette tapes next to the stereo console. I didn’t hesitate. My eyes were drawn to it and my finger pointed at it. The Pipes of Pan, music by tribesmen from the Atlas Mountains of North Africa. I’d been poolside at Brian Jones’s mansion outside of London when I first heard it. It was exactly what I wanted. After all, Pan is the root of the word panic.

I watched from the wings as old Tommy was positioned in his wheelchair at the foot of the runway. Tommy Junior came up and glowered at me. He yanked the front of my blouse down to expose my breasts. “Let them see what they’re getting for their money.”

“I was just about to do that myself,” I said, raking him with a fierce look that clawed his eyes and made him flinch. The ringmaster started the music, spoke my name and stated the opening bid. Shades of county fairs and the beginnings of my conquests as the queen of beauty. They could have at least started the bidding a little higher. I stepped out onto the runway accompanied by the cacophony of fifes and drums. I was in my element.

It was all very clear to me. I had become Treyann, the embodiment of the three secret aspects of womanhood: the ancient, the beautiful, and the powerful. As I swayed and whirled in dance, clapping my hands in rhythm over my head, proud of my firm uplifted breasts, nipples triumphant, I knew that all eyes were on me and soon they would be under my spell. They might have thought that their dreams were within their grasp. I was about to become their worst nightmare.

There was no doubt as to exactly who I was. I spoke to myself the words I had always known. I am Leeann, paramount in my sphere, far beyond competition in my beauty, in my power to enchant men. I am, in a word, irresistible, Aphrodite in human form, the face that launched a thousand shipwrecks. I am supreme, above the best. Over the currency of my flesh wars are fought, yet in my name peace is invoked.

A physical transformation took hold of me. My supple roundness acquired a hard muscular edge. The skin of my cheeks grew taut, my eyes narrowed to gun slits. I bared my teeth, canines extruded like those of a cat or viper. I knew then that I had their undivided attention. And I knew that they realized, perhaps not in so many words and with the same depth of understanding, that from the beginning of time they, as men, have struggled with the threat of female dominance, against her strength, her complexity and impenetrability, her dreadful omnipresence. No man has yet been born who is not spun from a pitiful gob of refuse to a conscious being on the secret loom deep within the cave of a woman’s body, the body that is a nurturing cradle but also the inevitable pitiless fatality of nature. As every woman I control all of creation. What I bring into this world I can take out. I am the beginning. I am the end.

I stopped in my tracks and thunder clapped thrice, swaying like an axe about to fall. The air crackled with a faint blue intensity. I heard a collective gasp. I concentrated all my energy directly at the old goat in the wheelchair. He burst like a paper bag full of wet sand.

Next Time: From The Frying Pan