The corridor was dark and lacked directional signs. Matt mistook his course, bouncing off the left wall first, and then the right. They were covered in some sort of vinyl, so he failed to hurt himself until, on his fourth bounce, he hit a good, solid wall.
“Come in here this instant, young man!” ordered a voice behind it. “You’re late again!”
He bounced on down the hall instead, found a door positioned at a right angle to the last wall he’d hit and pushed it open to find himself walking into a sizeable pink fanny. He hurried around this with an “E-excuse me,” and added, after a backward glance, a diplomatic if not perfectly accurate “Ma’am.”
Finding the next door, he spurted through the store, ripping off his mask. The clerk at the cash register glanced up, shrugged, and looked down again.
Hitting the cold air of the parking lot, he slowed enough to open his coat and stick one arm into a sleeve. Thus he was at only half speed when he hit the patch of ice. He slid to the left but jerked himself upright. This hurt, but not as much as falling.
A blue metal sign clung to a lamppost on the corner, and a green bus was just pulling up. Matt didn’t recognize the number on the side of the bus, but it was headed the right direction. Terra Cognita must be on its route somewhere.
Buttoning his coat with one hand, he fumbled in his pocket for the fare with the other. A handful of change went into the farebox. He took a transfer. This far from home sweet home, three or four buses might be required.
He worked his way down the aisle to an empty seat, grabbing for the overhead rail as the bus started away. He was panting, and supposed he must look like a pretty desperate character. The way the other passengers glanced at him and then turned away to the windows confirmed this. Matt had no doubt his face was bright red, and probably half his buttons were buttoned wrong. Unless they were looking away from….
He threw a glance over one shoulder. Ada Silberwetter was NOT following, pink and fuming, up the aisle. Silly idea; she would hardly have any pockets to keep a bus token in. Releasing a sigh, he sank into the seat with extra force as the bus braked for the next stop. Two people hurried out.
Something crinkled at his groin. Ada’s envelope! He had actually run all this way with who knew how much money dangling from his pants. He put a hand down to it. He felt paper, and he felt something else. He closed his eyes and muttered what was not at all a prayer.
Ada Silberwetter’s garter belt was extending from his coat sleeve and resting on his wrist. He recognized it by feel; a count of ten was required before he could open his eyes. The courage to take a more general inventory took several long, deep breaths.
It could have been worse. A stocking curled around his neck where the scarf, tucked into another coat sleeve, should have been. Panties were still rolled up down the front of his sweater. Still, they couldn’t see behind his sweater, and he could just sort of move his arm so the garter belt was mostly out of sight. Later he could ease it out of the sleeve and into the pocket. Putting his free hand to his throat, he nonchalantly slid the toe of the stocking down into the coat, patting it as if it was any scarf: just a scarf, you know, all you bus passengers, and if I want to adjust it a little, whose business is that? Matt peeked to see if his fellow riders were buying this.
No one would look at him. Matt was a little annoyed, but realized if they wouldn’t look at him, there was no problem. They could think what they liked: maybe they would assume they hadn’t seen what they clearly saw. Maybe they were used to redfaced men strewn with lingerie to come panting onto the bus from that particular address. He’d be all right, so long as this bus kept moving in the right direction. It was Ada Silberwetter who would have to go home without her stocking. This was probably not the first time.
He blinked. If she got home. Matt scowled at the empty seat ahead of him long enough to scare off a couple of new riders who had considered sitting there. Ada Silberwetter was manacled to a bed, in a defenseless if offensive position, at the mercy of any comers, including Miss Skull.
The scowl deepened as Matt considered whether he cared.
The passengers who had passed up the seat in front of Matt took up places behind him, in those three seats that faced the center aisle and resumed their conversation.
“I spent twenty, thirty dollars a week of DOG NINJA before I got it,” one declared.
“THAT’S bad as hell,” said the other, in admiration. “You get all the way through the fourth board?”
“Oh, sure, once I got it. You know that Soulsword, the one shaped like this? You wait ‘til it rise, you know, to…torso, say. You pick Stanley—the one with the ears and big eyes, you know?—and grab it and you can kill the Deadskull Monster.”
“I didn’t know that. I thought you had to find the stars and throw those in its eyes.”
“Yeah, but if you get the Soulsword you can just run into it and kill it. But you got to use Stanley, because he’s got the long jump. Otherwise, you got to go to Warpleap, and that takes forever.”
“You played REVENGE OF ANUBIS NIN yet?”
“That the one where you rescue your evil uncle at the end, or the one where the window opens and the dove goes free and there’s all this shit about brotherhood and world peace?”
Matt’s jaws ached. His eyes spread open. They had read the clues wrong all along!
The tombstone pictures had NOT been included by Miss Skull by accident. They were part of the message: Revenge! Ada could very easily have killed Jerry Silberwetter herself: natural thing for a blackmail victim to do. The woman had not a nerve in her entire body, and a limited conception of right and wrong: she’d have killed him coolly, without remorse. Maybe.
Whether she had done it or not, anyone who found the pictures and learned about Jerry’s blackmail could ASSUME she had done it. Having assumed that. This person could vow revenger, and let Ada know about it. The message of the pictures, juxtaposed with the tombstones, was easy to read for someone who really had brains: “I know from these pictures why you killed Geegee. You must pay.”
Secondhand blackmail was a cover: Ada, assuming money would do the job, would fall for it, and be lured to the spank club. No one out there would notice any assorted screams for mercy coming from a back room, and there was an assortment of utensils to use on one’s helpless victim.
Miss Skull was someone, then, with a mind subtle and somewhat warped, someone who had loved Jerry Silberwetter. Loved Geegee SIlberwetter. Loved Uncle Geegee.
Could anyone who dressed like Holly MacTaggart be completely sane?
Twisting in his seat, he looked back. The videoheads fell silent, but he was looking beyond them, to the roadway visible behind the bus. How many bus stops had they passed? How far had he already come from the scene of the crime? Lord, they were moving farther away with every second. How come a bus never got stuck in traffic when it would be useful?
He rose a little in his seat, and then sat down. Was this all any of his business? Yes, the possibilities were unpleasant, but how much did it matter, in the long run, if Holly killed her stepgrandmother? Was the continued existence of Ada Silberwetter something he wanted on his conscience?
Much easier to just stay here, just ride home. Except…Holly knew he was involved in this. When she finished Ada, she would come for him…and his mother. Of course, there was none of the fury, the deep-seated grudge here. Murders of collateral witnesses might involve no more than a gunshot. But Matt had plans for Christmas, and New Year’s, and a few years after that, and hadn’t he just decided Holly wasn’t normal? She could have more elaborate plans herself.
He came up a whole four inches this time, but sat down again all the same. To take action would be terribly bothersome. He’d have to get out, cross the street, find a bus stop, wait for another bus, and ride back. And how many bus routes serviced this neighborhood? His transfer would be no good on the route punched, so he couldn’t get a bus with the same number. How long would he stand waiting, while the sun started to set, before he realized there WERE no other buses running on this street on the weekend? And he had no very clear idea where he was: it would have to be done in a neighborhood he didn’t know? When he was growing up, he learned you did not hang around in strange neighborhoods unless you were sure of your ground. And Matt was never sure of his ground.
He braced himself. He threw his hand to the signal cord to request a stop. Where would they think he was going, in the middle of nowhere? Be brave, he told himself. Both of his brothers were the “Rip off the Band-Aid quick and get it over with” types. You had to face your problems head-on. This journey had to be made: he WOULD face Miss Skull.
And then what?
It was all very well to plan to be brave, but survival demanded something more. Of course, the chances he’d even meet Miss Skull were small. They wouldn’t let him back into the swat spot; he’d only been allowed in the first time because Ada escorted him.
The bus pulled to a stop. Matt slouched way down in his seat. The doors closed, and the bus moved on.
Maybe Holly wasn’t there yet. Maybe if he got out this next stop, and went back, he could meet her in the parking lot and, well, talk to her. Maybe convince her to take those negatives and her suspicions to the police. And if she insisted on private justice, well…Holly wasn’t so very big. She could hardly walk INTO the club with a gun ready, so he could haul her back to her car and…well, then what?
He raised his right hand, pulled it back, and then put it to the signal cord again.
Maybe Holly WAS there. Maybe she was inside, in disguise, or in nothing at all. He shrugged. Having been confronted with a naked Ada Silberwetter, could he really still be shocked by nude Holly?
Matt actually stepped to the doors when the bus slowed down. The game addicts shook their heads at each other as the big man stepped down, grumbling to himself.
He was bawling himself out. Ada wasn’t in any danger at all. The whole Holly MacTaggart revenge scenario was just Matt-the-Writer pushing plots again. If he really believed it, he’d be running to a pay phone to call police. He was just going back to make a fool of himself some more. At the spank club, he would find that Ada Silberwetter had simply found a new playmate. There was no Miss Skull, not really: this was all just an elaborate game Ada had made up as she went along.
You’re not even the hero of the story, he told himself: you’re an interchangeable sex toy.
Even if there was a Miss Skull, or any other danger, all she had to do was call out for the proprietor. She was a member of the club, right? They were probably old cronies. Matt knew he’d be better off staying at the bus stop, boarding the next bus going the direction he’d been going in the first place, to return to civilization.
Matt considered all these things. While he was considering them, he was striding across the street, dodging traffic because he didn’t feel like waiting. He didn’t slow down at the curb, just turned left and headed for the next sign showing where he could board a long green rectangle headed toward the discreet warehouse of welts. He slowed when he reached the bus stop but sped up again. Waiting for the bus gave too much time to think this over and, as a veteran of waiting at bus stops, he knew he might just make faster progress walking from stop to stop until he got to his destination without gasoline powered assistance.
The sidewalk was intermittent, and even where it existed it was covered in slush. There were no other pedestrians. He spotted no buses in the roadway, and certainly no cabs. His feet were cold, and his shoes were taking on water. He did not slow down.
“Hey, Matt!”
He still didn’t slow down. Not having been listening for a yell, he wasn’t sure he’d heard it. Someone could be yelling at a cat, or there might be a fight somewhere out of sight where someone had shouted “Take that!” Even if he had heard right, there were plenty of men in the world named Matt.
A little red car pulled up to the curb a little ahead of him. The passenger door swung open. “Hey, what if I promise NOT to buy you a Big Mac?”
