The Trouble With Hairy, page 40
part #2 of West Hollywood Vampires Series
Shanda jumped and let out a small scream of fear as the plywood covering the front door was ripped aside and Troy burst in.
“He’s here!” Troy shouted, and made a grab for the wolfsbane he’d left lying on the broken coffee table.
“Oh my God,” Shanda said, and dropping the telephone to hang from its cord, forgotten, she leapt up from the shredded couch and positioned herself as she and Troy had rehearsed. She could hear Chris’ voice coming from the dangling receiver as he shouted into his end of the line.
“Are you sure it wasn’t the Maltese Terrier next door?” she whispered.
Troy sneezed in reply.
“Oh God,” Shanda moaned softly. “This was a bad idea,” she said with quiet panic, “a very bad idea.”
“Just do everything like we planned,” Troy said, calmly.
He had no time to continue reassuring her, for with his last word, the door was filled with a huge, hairy form.
Shanda froze as the werewolf fixed her with a baleful gaze. “Look defenseless,” she told herself. “Like Merle Oberon in Wuthering Heights. Let him get all the way inside.”
But the werewolf, mindful of his last experience in Shanda’s apartment, was being cautious. It slowly entered the room, growling quietly, carefully placing one paw in front of the other, sniffing the air. It had almost fully entered the room when it’s nostrils twitched and its head rotated toward Troy, who had hidden himself in the corner, his back to the wall on the other side of the doorway, trying desperately not to sneeze.
“Now!” Troy shouted, and without hesitation, he leapt out and, using all of his strength, brought a heavy silver candlestick down on top of the werewolf’s head.
The creature roared in pain and reared up on its hind legs.
Why, oh why, Shanda asked herself, do we keep using that goddamned candlestick when it obviously doesn’t work?
With this thought, and before the monster could attack Troy, Shanda spied an umbrella which she and Troy had placed on the floor next to the couch and snatched it up. They’d had the tip of the thing silver plated earlier that afternoon and had attached three sterling silver dinner forks to the end with a mixture of electrical tape and Krazy Glue for good measure. Grinning at the Charlie Chaplin-ness of what she was about to do, she thrust the homemade weapon straight into the monster’s hindquarters.
Shanda’s aim was better than she’d expected. Bracing herself to shove against the resistance of the forks’ contact with the werewolf’s rear end, she was surprised when the umbrella met only slight resistance and suddenly continued moving forward, throwing her off balance. She sprawled onto the floor and rapidly scrambled backwards to get out of the way. Thus, she missed the werewolf’s reaction to her attack.
Troy, however, got a full frontal view. He watched, fascinated through watering eyes, as the creature froze, its eyes growing round, almost bulging from their sockets, and it emitted a slight, uncomfortable cough of surprise. It began to make a high-pitched whining sound that rapidly increased in volume until Troy found the urge to cover his ears almost irresistible. But, resist he did, and with deft agility and a maddeningly itchy nose, he ducked underneath the creature’s outstretched claws and thrust the wolfsbane straight into its face.
As soon as the white flowers touched its skin, the werewolf began to change form, shimmering into a tall, dark haired young man of about thirty-five years.
“Thank God,” Troy said as he felt his sinuses begin to clear almost immediately. “Not bad looking,” he added after a moment. The invader was, of course, nude and Troy couldn’t help himself from taking a peek at the more interesting portions of their attacker’s anatomy. Good God, he thought with envy, I wonder if they’re all like that!
His speculation was cut short as the lupine growl transformed into a very human squeal of pain. The reason became clear as the creature solidified into its human form. Shanda’s thrust had been true; Guy Chartreuse was firmly impaled on the end of the umbrella, his weight driving it further and further into his bowels.
“Grab the end,” Troy shouted. “And brace it!”
Shanda looked up at the naked rear end above her and saw half of an umbrella sticking out from between Guy’s cheeks. Acting almost before Troy could give the order, she took his command one step further. She grabbed the umbrella handle and pressed the release button. The werewolf let out an “oof” of discomfort as the umbrella tried to open inside his body.
From Troy’s point of view, Guy Chartreuse suddenly had the most interesting look on his face. His stomach muscles tightened as he tried to expel the umbrella from his innards. But, once again, Shanda moved too quickly for him.
Shifting her grip on the handle, she pushed as hard as she could, throwing her weight into the motion. She was rewarded by a scream of pain from Louis’ cousin that grew even louder as Troy darted forward, grabbed Guy around the calves and pulled his legs out from under him.
The umbrella was almost ripped from the drag queen’s hands as Guy fell backwards, losing his balance altogether and sat down straight on the fork-tipped umbrella, impaling himself further. As Guy’s weight increased the pressure, the handle snapped. Shanda toppled backwards, still clutching the wooden handle, coming to rest on her own rear end, her skirt billowing up around her ears, with the breath knocked out of her.
Guy was not so lucky. He too, fell flat on his ass. And, since a hunk of handle remained sticking out of his behind, the force of his fall jammed the umbrella almost all the way in. As he bounced, once, up into the air, Shanda got a glimpse of the opening of his rectum which, what with the little knobby spars of the opening umbrella poking out around the edges, reminded her of some sort of bizarre flower with tiny petals. Guy’s screams increased in volume until they were deafening. Troy and Shanda remained frozen in astonishment as the werewolf’s heels pounded madly on the floor, his hands scrabbling for purchase as he sought to hoist himself high enough to relieve the burning pressure in his innards.
Becky had spent almost two hours at Chris’ new apartment, brainstorming about where Troy could possibly be drowning his sorrows. She was all for marching out onto the streets of West Hollywood with a bullhorn loudly promising what the two of them planned to do to Troy unless he appeared immediately. Chris, however, was agonizingly indecisive about leaving the apartment, fearing that, the moment they embarked on their search, Troy would return home and they would miss him. To add to Becky’s mounting frustration, every time she could finally get Chris to agree on a good spot to start looking, the angst of indecision would overcome him again, and as they were going out the door, he would come up with a half dozen entirely new and more likely places.
The two of them were trying, at Chris’ insistence, to make up a written list of all the places Troy might have gone. When, and if, the vampire ever completed his compilation, Becky resolved to point her finger at the list at random to choose a starting point. Heaven help Chris if he gave her any guff!
“We’ll make two lists,” Chris had told her. “One for his usual hangouts and one in case he’s decided to try and kill himself in some crazy, spectacular way.”
An hour and a half later, Chris’ brow was furrowed in concentration as he added yet another location to his ever-lengthening list and then resumed nervously chewing on the end of the pen.
At this rate, Becky thought, half the bars and restaurants he’s listed will have been out of business for years before we hit the streets. “Will you just pick some place for Christ’s sake?” Becky finally exploded. “By the time you fill up the rest of that frigging notebook, he could have gotten anywhere!”
“No,” Chris replied with the first confidence he’d exhibited all evening. “He never leaves West Hollywood. Except to go to Rodeo Drive, of course, but they’re closed by this hour. If he’s just out, he’ll be easy to find at Studio One, Rage or Mickey’s. But, if he tried to pull a George Sanders on us…”
He’d paused, thoughtfully. “What are the romantic suicide spots in town?”
“What if he tries the Judy Garland/James Mason bit again?” Becky asked.
“No,” Chris told her. “No matter how upset he is, he wants me to find him. The beach is too far away. Anyway, he’d have to have driven, and the car — or what’s left of it — is still in the garage.”
“A bus, maybe?” Becky suggested.
Chris snorted, derisively. “Now, that’s something I’d like to see. Troy, using public transportation!”
“Well, maybe he’s borrowed a car and is driving around the Whole Foods supermarket parking lot looking for a space. That’s the surest way I know of committing suicide.”
“Very funny,” Chris commented, dryly.
“I’m serious. I take my life into my hands every time I stop in to get a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.”
Chris merely glared at her.
“There’s the Hollywood sign,” she suggested, trying to be helpful. “Half a dozen starlets have jumped from it.”
Chris shook his head, negatively. “We’ve tried to get up to it a couple of times and we always get lost. If he could find it, it’d be perfect, but he can’t.”
“The top of Shoreham Towers?”
“Too obvious.”
“How about the Saint James Club? It’s like twelve stories tall.”
“We’re not members,” Chris said. “Even if we were, do you think they’d let him in dressing the way he does?”
“You’re right.” Becky put her thinking cap on, but was unable to come up with anything that Chris would find satisfactory.
“I dunno,” she said finally, throwing up her hands in defeat. “I guess West Hollywood will just never be the suicide capital of the world. Murders, we’ve had more than our share, but suicide…” It was at that precise moment that the telephone rang. Chris bolted to get it.
“Troy?” he demanded. He listened and a moment later, he turned to Becky. “It’s Shanda. Troy was just there.”
“Great,” she stood up and grabbed her purse. “Ask her to drive him home. I’m pooped.”
“Will you just wait a second?” Chris said and turned back to the telephone.
“Chris, I’m exhausted,” Becky complained. “Just tell Carlos to bring him back. I’m going to stop by Gelsons, pick something up and go home.”
“Will you just wait?” Chris yelled at her. Becky turned to him, surprised by the outburst and saw the look of alarm on his face.
“Oh shit,” she said, “Not again.” Suddenly, the inactivity of the past two hours seemed welcome.
Chris was yelling something about “staying put” into the telephone. Suddenly, his expression changed from one of exasperation to one of pure horror. Even from where she was sitting, Becky could hear the tinny sound of the commotion over at Shanda’s.
“He’s killing them!” Chris suddenly shouted as Guy’s screams came across the telephone wires. He turned to Becky in helpless anguish.
“Call 911!” she ordered, and grabbed up her medical bag.
“Are you crazy?” Chris yelled back. “What are they gonna do?”
“Well, call Clive, then,” Becky said in exasperation. “But for Christ’s sake, call somebody!”
“I can’t!” Chris yelled back as he pressed the hang up button, “I can’t break the connection.”
“Don’t you have call waiting?” Becky asked, dazed and unable to think of anything really helpful to say.
“Oh, fuck it!” he yelled, and dashed out the door.
Becky raced after him, already groping in her bag for her syringe of silver nitrate, tossing empty M&M bags out onto the floor of the hallway, praying they’d be in time.
CHAPTER 20
Pamela Burman sat bolt upright in bed. She’d been tossing and turning since retiring at nine and had finally dozed off. But her sleep had not been restful. Tormented by a series of disturbing nightmares, the last dream had woken her up, leaving her breathing heavily and in a cold sweat.
Throwing back the covers, she thrust her feet into red and yellow slippers and grabbed a gold and green cotton robe from the foot of the bed. Wrapping it around herself and blinking sleep from her eyes, she wandered into the living room and switched on the lamp next to the sofa.
“Move over,” she grumbled, and shoved her hip against Louis, jostling him out of the way as she sank down onto the couch. She tried to move Brer Rabbit, who was taking up most of the space that wasn’t already occupied by Louis. But the werewolf growled softly in his sleep and snuggled closer to the stuffed animal, placing his paws protectively across its middle. She gave up, resigning herself to sharing her couch with two creatures she’d always believed were fictional and Louis settled his head back onto his paws, snoring softly.
“You shed on my couch…” she threatened quietly.
She stopped her threat and blinked instead. Something wasn’t right but, for a second, the exact nature of her disquiet escaped her. Everything seemed peaceful, normal even, if one could discount the fact that a large wolf was sleeping on her sofa with a giant stuffed rabbit. Why, then, this strange feeling of unease?
Burman had felt this feeling before. Exactly five times before. Each time she’d had the premonition of disaster, she later found out it had signified the rather abrupt end to whichever one of her marriages had been current at the time.
As a girl, she awakened from horrible nightmares about two weeks into her first marriage to a young naval officer from New Hampshire. She’d rolled over in her bed, ready to wrap herself around him so that he could soothe her and stifle her fears. But the bed had been empty. True, she’d been a virgin on their honeymoon and ignorant of her “wifely duties.” But that was no reason for him to look elsewhere, at least not so soon after the marriage. Burman supposed there was a certain poetic justice in his demise. Though she had avoided being penetrated, her husband had not; his body was discovered in the parking lot of a local whorehouse, riddled with bullets. The crime was never solved.
Her second husband had fared no better and the marriage was even shorter, not even lasting through the honeymoon cruise. On the third night out from New York on the way to London, he suggested a moonlight stroll along the foggy deck of the ship. But young Pamela had felt inexplicably ill at ease. Begging off with the excuse of a mild headache, she’d retired to the cabin, leaving her husband to take in the beauty of the ocean on his own. He managed to become intimately acquainted with the sea’s bounty when he lost his bearings in the fog and strolled right off the deck of the ship.
Pamela wisely waited almost a decade before marrying again. The first three years of marriage to the wealthy owner of a candle factory were happy, if not particularly exciting. She tried to begin a family but, as it turned out, Pamela was barren. She was later thankful she hadn’t been saddled having to raise a child on her own, for, by the time year four of the marriage rolled around, her husband had fallen off a catwalk into a vat of molten tallow and was suitable for nothing more than having a wick thrust between his teeth to provide mood lighting at his own funeral. Pamela’s clearest memory of the event was the feeling that something was wrong which had seemed to pervade the atmosphere on the day her husband took his fatal swan dive into the melted fat.
But Pamela, with the tenacity that was to mark her later years as West Hollywood’s city manager, was undaunted and, two years later, remarried yet a fourth time. Her luck had not changed. Within six months, Fate, with an extraordinary Rube Goldberg-ian burst of creativity, caused another husband to bite the dust. Morris Singer, was an advertising man with a distinct affinity for Captain Black’s pipe tobacco, one of his most prestigious accounts. He woke on the morning of his death, groped for his pipe and tobacco and discovered that the humidor was empty. Pamela begged Morris to wait until after breakfast before going to the store; she had an ominous feeling that it was important that he do so. But Morris laughed at her fears and jauntily sauntered out of the house and on his way.
Morris had at least had the pleasure of a pipe full of Captain Black’s before the end; the clerk testified that he packed the pipe and lit up while still in the tobacco shop. On the way home, though Morris’ car was totaled in a head on collision with a truck, both drivers had escaped unscathed except for minor cuts and bruises.
Just after the accident report had been filled out, an inattentive driver slammed into Morris’ car from the rear. And Morris Singer disappeared. He had opened the lid of the trunk to retrieve his precious Captain Black’s when the impact from the second accident toppled him into the trunk, knocking him unconscious and slamming the lid down on top of him. In the commotion, no one noticed that Morris was gone until after the tow truck had left, trailing behind it the wrecked Chevrolet.
Pamela was frantic. It wasn’t so much the loss of her husband that she minded; she was used to that. But the idea of not knowing what had happened to him was driving her crazy. Two weeks later, after she had signed the insurance papers, authorizing the car to be sold as salvage, her curiosity was assuaged. The car was compacted at the wrecking yard, and to the consternation of the compactor’s operator, blood seeped from the twisted metal. The insurance money was quickly eaten up by the funeral parlor, which had to commission a custom-designed casket, Morris’ remains being too inextricably linked to the Chevrolet to bury in any of the conventional coffins they carried in stock.
More ticked off than truly desolate, after all, she’d had maids she’d employed for longer than any of her marriages had lasted, Pamela resolved to remain single. But less than a year later she met Harry Burman. The moment she’d set eyes on Harry, his teeth clamped firmly around the butt of his unlit cigar at the reception for her eldest nephew’s circumcision, Pamela had fallen madly in love.
Harry wasn’t a particularly attractive man. Stout, with a bulbous nose and a huge, fleshy slash of a mouth, he accentuated his girth with large, vibrantly colored plaid suits and ridiculously large hats. Pamela’s love of bright, mismatched colors was a continuing tribute to her memory of Harry Burman. It was his eyes, she’d later told him, which had captured her heart. They belayed his gruff, slightly abrasive manner and his penchant for loud braying laughter, revealing the caring soul beneath.
