Toll Call Read online

  Tomkins laughed, mordantly and pathetically. Peggy leaned into me and took my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed back, to give her more hope than I had myself.

  Tomkins blinked his eyes and waved the gun. “I think I’ll take it slow. Slow and easy.” He gave Peggy a chilling grin. “So what say, honey? Why don’t you just take them off.”

  Peggy’s hand contracted around my own. “No.”

  “Strip, damnit.”

  “Never.”

  “Why not? It won’t be the first time, I’ll bet.”

  The threatened reprise of her mortification at the hands of the spider made Peggy a martyr. “Not for you. Not ever.”

  “Well, hell. I’m a reasonable man. Since you’re a little shy, I’ll just help you out.”

  Tomkins took two steps toward us and reached for the buttons to Peggy’s blouse. As his hand passed below my nose I lashed out and slapped it away. With a bitter curse he backhanded my face. When I put up a fist to counter his punch he shoved the revolver against my cheek, hard enough to break the flesh. “Don’t even think about it, Tanner. I’d just as soon take you out right now. But you don’t want me to do that, because in about two minutes me and the little lady are going to put on the juiciest fuck show you’ve ever seen. It’ll make my videos seem like a rerun of the Sermon on the Mount. It’ll be a hell of a treat, Tanner. That is if you like sex. You do like sex, don’t you? I know you like the weird stuff. Hell, if I had a camera I could shoot me a snuff film. Make a fortune off of guys like you.”

  Tomkins laughed and withdrew the pistol from my face. As he did I noticed a crack in the grip that reminded me of the pistol on Karen Whittle’s wall.

  A tear of blood dripped down my jaw, then fell onto my shirt. I debated a mad attack, to let the chips fall where they may, but it had no chance of success. I squeezed Peggy’s hand again, and waited for a gift.

  Tomkins backed to the opposite side of the room and began looking for something, I wasn’t sure what. Peggy leaned toward me and whispered, “Are you all right?”

  “So far.”

  “Why is he doing this?”

  “I have an idea, but there’s no point going into it unless we get out of here.”

  “Maybe I should do what he wants.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll think of something,” I whispered. “But it might help if you could flirt with him a little. Divert his attention somehow. Give me a chance to jump him.”

  Peggy nodded as Tomkins came back within earshot, looking at his watch along the way. “Time’s awasting,” he said. “Get ’em off, honey, and let’s get this over with. Not that I don’t intend to enjoy it.” He paused and looked me in the eye. “Bet you’re thinking you’ll have a chance to take me out when things get hot and heavy, right, Tanner? Well, look what I just happened to bring to the party.”

  Tomkins reached in his pocket and brought out a circular disk that was thin and white. He fumbled with it for a moment, then drew out a strand of what I finally realized was adhesive tape. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back. Come on. Do what I tell you or you’re going to have a lump on your head the size of Russian Hill.”

  With a sudden crack, the barrel of the pistol banged against my skull, not hard enough to knock me unconscious, just hard enough to convince me he was serious. I did as he asked, trying to separate my hands as he applied the bandage, trying to leave room to maneuver, but he was good at the task and by the time he was finished I was trussed up like a turkey on the way to the oven.

  When he finished with my hands, Tomkins spun me back around and forced me to the floor, then began to do my ankles the way he had done my wrists. When I put up some resistance he banged the pistol against my kneecap, hard enough to make me groan.

  When both my hands and feet were securely bound, he tore off a long strip of tape and tipped me to my side and taped ankles and wrists together behind my back so I was virtually immobile, a ridiculous horse rocking on my stomach. Clearly I should have risked anything not to get myself in this position. And clearly it was too late for hindsight and regret.

  “There we go,” Tomkins said as he finished up. “Now, I’m going to do you a big favor, Tanner. I’m going to let you watch.” He twisted my body so it was more or less reclined against the wall, my head facing forward, my neck and back bent in painful, opposing arcs.

  While Tomkins had been wrapping tape around my ankles, I noticed that Peggy was looking around the boiler room for something, presumably an object that would serve as a defensive weapon. In between passes of the tape, Tomkins kept an eye on her as well, however, and only when he was finishing up the final wrap did Peggy have time to turn and pluck something off a rack of implements that was hanging on the wall. I couldn’t see what it was, but as she stuffed it into the back of her skirt I was hoping it was our salvation.

  When he was finished with me, Tomkins backed away and turned to Peggy. “Okay, honey. It’s show time. Off with the clothes. Don’t worry about getting nothing dirty. You won’t be needing them again.”

  Peggy canted a hip and adopted a brassy sneer. “You expect me to make love to you right here on this filthy floor?”

  “Sure. Why not? If it hurts too bad I’ll let you ride on top.”

  “It’s not very romantic.”

  “Romance takes time, honey, and I don’t have it. Now come on. Let me see those tits.”

  “Not here.”

  Tomkins brandished the gun in her face. “You think this is a bagel or something, lady? When a guy has a gun you don’t make demands, you do what he says.”

  “Not here,” Peggy repeated. “If you want to make love to me you have to get me something soft to lie on. There’s some old mattresses in the storeroom down the hall. Go get one, and—”

  “Get this, bitch,” Tomkins roared, and slugged Peggy on the side of her jaw with the butt of the pistol.

  Peggy slumped to the floor, stunned but conscious. I started a cockeyed roll toward her but Tomkins kicked me in the side hard enough to stop me.

  Peggy groaned and sat up, rubbing her jaw and shaking her head. Tomkins stood over her like a slave master. “You want it rough, huh? You like to pretend you’re putting up a fight. Good enough. How’s this?”

  Tomkins reached for Peggy’s blouse and ripped it at the shoulder. Peggy scooted away from him as far as she could, but Tomkins followed her to the corner she retreated to, reached down, and grasped another piece of blouse. This time two buttons popped away and Peggy’s chest was bare but for her black brassiere.

  “Wait,” Peggy said, holding up a hand to prevent another grope. “Wait. If we’re going to do it let’s make it nice.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Tomkins said, and stepped back to let her get to her feet. “Maybe I should go first,” he added, and reached for his belt and tugged it free of the buckle.

  Peggy stepped closer to him and reached out a hand. “Shall I help?”

  Her question was flirting, tantalizing, suggestive, and commanded Tomkins’ full attention. I struggled with my bonds, and thought I felt some give, then heard a piece of tape begin to tear. Encouraged, I strained harder, and felt my muscles surge, then cramp into painful knots. I rested a moment, then began again.

  Tomkins eyed Peggy as though to measure the sincerity of her offer. “Okay, honey. Help yourself.” He raised his hands above his head, to let Peggy have free access to his clothing.

  With her right hand, Peggy reached slowly for his fly, her body making the gesture a promise of more to come, her eyes dripping tears that contradicted her debauched display. I strained at my bonds again. When they didn’t yield I struggled to sit up.

  “Tomkins. Hey. I stole your pictures.”

  Tomkins raised his eyes off Peggy’s fumblings and looked at me. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The pictures. Of Lily Whittle.”

  Tomkins froze. “What about them?”

  “I stole them from your apartment this afternoon.”

  “Li
ke hell.”

  “If I didn’t, how would I know they existed?”

  The pictures were clearly crucial to him. He turned, putting Peggy at his back. I summoned all my strength and applied it against the strands of tape. Nothing gave me faith. Tomkins took two steps toward me.

  “Where are they?” he demanded.

  “Not till you let us go.”

  He shook his head. “But I’ll make it easier on you if you tell me.”

  “Sorry. If I go, so do the pictures.”

  “Shit. I bet you got them in your pocket. I bet you’re keeping them for yourself.”

  He came to where I lay and stood over me, then reached for my jacket to search the pocket for his treasures. His attention was so diverted he didn’t notice Peggy raise her hand behind his shoulder. An instant later she plunged a screwdriver through his neck.

  Peggy screamed in terror at her own commission. The cross-hatched head of the Phillips blade penetrated Tomkins’ throat and emerged through the other side, as bloody and blunt as a bullet. A ragged plug of flesh dropped to the floor, to make way for a rush of blood.

  Tomkins dropped his gun and clutched his throat, his cry a muffled gurgle through a flooded larynx. His head rolled from side to side to dislodge the spear, but Peggy held fast, the tool thrust to its hilt. As he fought to force the probe to reverse its course, Tomkins sank to his knees and inclined at the waist, a final, desperate prayer. Exhausted by her effort, Peggy fell to the floor beside him, her eyes unseeing, her breaths as heaving as Tomkins’ own.

  I rolled, not toward the two combatants but toward the gun that had fallen between them. Because they were too engrossed in life and death to think of it, I was able to press the pistol beneath my body, then maneuver enough to grasp it in my fingers behind my back before Tomkins realized what I was doing. With a strangled curse he released his throat and dove for me. Unclamped, the severed artery spewed forth a crimson geyser that showered us both in thick, sweet syrup as we struggled for title to the weapon.

  Despite his wound, Tomkins was strong enough to overpower me and my still-joined limbs. Avoiding my attempt to knee and then to butt him, he rolled me to my side, ripped the gun from my hands, lumbered to his feet, and leveled it at me. “You bastard. At least I’ll take you with me.” With his penultimate burst of energy, he drew the hammer back and focused on my chest.

  At his side Peggy began to crawl toward him. It seemed to be happening in slow motion, in a fourth dimension, but that must have been a defect in my senses because before Tomkins could accomplish his mission Peggy extended her arms, wrapped them around his knees, and struggled for leverage to topple him.

  When he felt her embrace, Tomkins kicked at her until he broke her grip and forced her back. Then he backed to the wall across from me, leaned heavily against its stiff support, and trained the gun again. “Say good-bye to the world, Tanner. You and me are back on the elevator. And this one’s going all the way to the bottom.”

  The discharge made the room implode. Dirt and dust drifted down from the ceiling, jarred by reverberating echoes. Tomkins’ body slammed against the wall behind him. Steam roared even above the gunshot, and a fresh white stream canted across the room and condensed on Tomkins’ face in tiny droplets that gradually became a splash. Tomkins’ smile became beatific, as though my death would gain him paradise.

  I must have been hit, but it caused not a specific pain but only a general slump of lethargy. As I felt my strength slip away, Peggy rolled across the floor, moaning, as though she too were wounded. I started to yell for her to watch out—that he was still dangerous, still had his gun—when Tomkins toppled onto me and spilled more blood across my face.

  As I writhed to get him off me, I heard a raucous jeer. “Why didn’t you tell me you folks were having an orgy down here? If I’d known I’d have been on time.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  In the aftershock of the blast and the steam and the screams, I thought for a moment I’d been blinded. Then I blinked and knew it was blood that blurred my vision, and that everyone was apparently all right except for Tomkins, and that Tomkins was dead because Ruthie Spring had shot him. I rolled out from under Tomkins’ hemorrhaging corpse and called for Ruthie to come cut my bonds.

  It seemed to take a year, but finally I heard her boots echo across the concrete floor like the beats of an empty heart. I asked her to wipe my eyes. When she did I could see that her crack about the orgy had been a rough reaction to the aftershock of homicide, that Ruthie was as capable as the rest of us of stark chagrin.

  With eyes as vacant as I’d seen them except on the day of Harry’s death, Ruthie bent over me, examined my bondage, then reached into her purse and pulled out a knife big enough to skin a bear and sharp enough to shave with. A second later she had flicked through the strands of tape without a catch.

  When I was free of my restraints and had rubbed some circulation back into my limbs, I looked up at Ruthie. “You okay?”

  She managed a weathered grin. “I’m not sure, sugar bear. Feel a little like I did in Korea the first time they tossed a sucking chest wound on the table.”

  “You ever kill someone before, Ruthie?”

  She shook her head. “That was one pleasure I was hoping to get through life without.”

  “Well, you still haven’t. Tomkins was dead before you pulled the trigger.”

  “Didn’t look that way from where I stood.”

  “Oh, he had enough left to take me out with him, and he would have if you hadn’t come along. But you shot a dead man, Ruthie. If you don’t believe me, go look at what used to be his throat.”

  Ruthie stayed where she was. My claim of Tomkins’ prior demise didn’t dissolve her daze. She replaced the knife in her purse, then took out her gun and looked at it, then replaced it as well, and left my side and went to examine Tomkins. When she straightened up again there was more flicker than fear in her eyes. I decided she was stable enough to leave, so I crawled toward Peggy.

  She had burrowed into the corner like a wounded spaniel, so close to the furnace the heat was stifling. Tomkins’ kick had evidently caught her ribs, the ones already tender from her fall, and she was groaning with each breath. I draped her tattered blouse around her shoulders, then took her hand and rubbed it. She seemed eased by my ministrations, but when I asked if she was okay she gave me a startled stare, as though in the circumstances such an inquiry was wicked.

  “You saved my life, kiddo,” I said softly.

  Her eyes stayed wide and defenseless, locked on the evil hulk of the incinerator. Whatever she saw there obliterated me, so I tried again.

  “I’d be dead if you hadn’t stabbed him, Peggy. You would be too. And you’d have wanted to die a long time before he killed you. What you did was brave and necessary. Do you understand?”

  I thought she nodded, but given the pain that laced her body I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a flinch.

  “You saved my life,” I said again. “I can’t let someone resign who saved my life. In fact, I think I have to give you a raise. I think it’s a state law, that if an employee saves your life you have to give them a raise. Talk about your oppressive government regulations.”

  Despite my dingy humor, she stayed curled in her muggy cave. I bent toward her and spoke when my lips were six inches from her ear. “Ruthie shot him,” I whispered harshly, not loud enough for Ruthie to overhear. “Do you remember that? Tomkins was going to kill me and Ruthie came in and shot him.”

  That seemed to focus her. “Ruthie?” she said. “Is Ruthie here?”

  I gestured behind me. “She saved us. Both of you saved us. You make quite the dynamic duo.”

  “She shot him?”

  “Right in the chest. Right before he had a chance to shoot me.”

  “Good,” she said. “Good.”

  I asked her where she hurt, but she didn’t answer. “Can you stand up?”

  Lapsed again, she made no movement to rise. I put my arm around her shoulders and gave her a rea
ssuring hug, but she was unyielding.

  “I’ll carry you,” I said mildly, as though we were confronted only by a puddle. “We’ll go up to your place and wait for Charley. Okay? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Long seconds passed, then she nodded. I went to where Ruthie stood staring down at Tomkins’ freshly lacquered body. “I think we should get out of here,” I said. “We’ve already seen enough to last a lifetime.”

  Ruthie didn’t move. “I’ve seen a lot of dead ones, Marsh,” she said hollowly, “but this is different. With the others, hell, even with the Chi Corns, I felt like maybe where they were going was better than this crummy vale of tears. But not this one. This one’s on his way to purgatory, Marsh. And I don’t like to think I sent him there.”

  “He was in hell long before you shot him, Ruthie. He was a prisoner of his perversions, and you didn’t have anything to do with that. You just did what you had to do to save my life. I owe you, Ruthie. Big.”

  Ruthie didn’t acknowledge the debt. “I was outside staking him out,” she explained, as though giving a statement to a cop. “I saw you two go in the building. I thought I saw Tomkins look out his window as you got out of the car, but I wasn’t sure. I waited a while, but when you didn’t come back I decided I’d better check it out. I buzzed until someone let me in, and noticed the door to the garage was ajar, so I decided to come in and look around. I hung around till I heard some kind of noise. Seemed like it came from in here so I wandered over for a look-see. Didn’t appear there was any time to chat, so I opened fire. Damn. He’s as dead as anyone I’ve ever seen.”

  “You keep trying to take credit and I keep telling you you can’t.”

  “I know what you told me. It helps a little but it doesn’t help enough.”

  “If you hadn’t shot him I’d be dead.”

  “That helps a little too. That one will probably get me through it.”

  For the first time Ruthie looked at me instead of at her fallen target. When she gave me a glimpse of her sassy grin I thought I could stop worrying about her. “Damn, you got a lot of blood on you,” she said as she looked me over. “Any of it yours?”