Chapter 3
It had been easy. When he came out of the trance, he opened his eyes, squinting them against the glare of the sun. He felt refreshed and strong although his body was coated with sweat. But the power, welled in his body, making him feel as young as he had ever felt.
The old man, of course, was dead, and of no use to him any longer. The body seemed so small and frail with all the life and personality gone from it. Even the rope served no purpose any more. It was just as dead as the old man.
There was a dark movement overhead and when he looked up he saw a group of large birds circling straight above him. The old man had pointed one out to him as they traveled. Vultures, he had said they were. The man had never seen vultures before, not even in the big city zoo.
"They eat dead things," he whispered to himself. "Even people."
That wouldn't be any good for him. It would attract attention from drivers on the road, from rangers, even. He took the shovel out of the truck and hurried to dig a hole so that he could bury the body of the old man.
It didn't take long; the ground was sandy and soft and he encountered no rocks. He was about to drag the body into the hole when he remembered something and searched the pockets of the old man for his wallet. He found it and shoved it into his pants pocket and then got back to work.
The vultures were still floating around when he drove back to the road, but he didn't Worry about them any more. He had dug a deep hole and covered it well.
As he drove along he examined the contents of the wallet. He found a driver's license made out to Barny Jonas, age 65, and two hundred dollars in bills. He smiled to himself, thinking about the good luck that had struck him.
Yes, this was the first time he had tried anything like this, but he had dreamed about it all his life, almost. He had thought about it happening, someone, tied, helplessly, before him, and unable to free himself while he watched.
Many times, in thinking about it, he had known the same terrible but wonderful excitement that gripped his body, stirring his very guts, sending flesh and mind into the ecstatic release that he could find in no other way.
He knew men who went out with girls, drinking and dancing, and then taking them to rooms where they could be alone. And he had wondered why they did it, what pleasure they could find in it. He had never wanted to be with or near a girl. He preferred only the images his mind conjured-the tied or chained people that he watched.
It was then that he felt power and excitement and glory, and only then. It didn't matter whether he imagined men or women, just so long as their hands and legs were tied and they could not get away.
There had been the time, too, when he had gone with some fellows who worked in the garage with him to a house where there were girls for pay. He had gone along because the guys had kidded him about the fact that he never had been laid.
"What are you, a fairy?" one of the fellows had asked.
"The hell I am," he had replied.
"Then come with us. It'll only cost you five bucks and it'll be worth it The broads are great."
So he had gone and he had vomited. He couldn't understand what the other fellows saw in feeling the crude whores, and then going into different rooms with them. He held back but one of the girls, a small, very thin blond, took his hand and said, "Come on, buddy. We're on a tight schedule here."
When he saw her naked he wanted to turn and run. She was ugly with her flopping boobs and skinny shanks. If he could have tied her up, taken that arrogance out of her, shown her who was boss, maybe it would have been different. Maybe he would have known excitement and joy.
But he didn't dare suggest such an idea to the woman. And when she started to fumble at his fly he said, "Wait, miss. Don't do it, please?"
And she had said the same thing they said at the garage, "What are you, a fairy?"
"It's not that. I ... I don't feel very good."
"Well, I'll make you feel better, kid. Leave it to me. I know all kinds of tricks."
"No!" he exclaimed, pushing her hands a-way. "You don't understand...."
"I understand, all right," the girl smirked. "You are a virgin. What held you up, buddy? You must be over thirty."
"It's not that, either. I'm sick, really, I ... I've got a dose...."
"What?" the girl drew her hands back in horror.
"That's right," he said. "Look, I'll pay you the money...."
He shoved the five dollars into the woman's hands. She put it in a drawer of the dresser and then slipped into her robe.
"Of all things," she said. "Why did you come here if you got a dose, anyway?"
"The guys. They were panning me...."
The woman smiled thinly. "And you wanted to be one of the guys, eh? Sure, I know how it is. You were ashamed to tell 'em what you had."
"That's right. Look, you won't tell them, will you?"
The woman shrugged her thin shoulders. "Why should I tell 'em? You can tell 'em anything you like, sonny. Tell 'em you screwed me five times and I begged for more. I don't give a crap."
"Thanks. Can I just sit down and smoke a cigarette?"
"Half a cigarette. I told you I'm on a tight schedule."
"Oh, sure. Half a cigarette. Thanks."
He lit a cigarette and sat on a chair away from the bed and as he smoked, he watched the woman sitting on the bed and his mind began to work up images there in the shadowed room, dank with the smell of the woman and of many bodies.
He saw her tied hand and foot, her mouth gagged, her body thrown back on the bed helplessly. He licked his suddenly dry lips and blinked his eyes, trying to destroy the image. He didn't want to think of such things now. All he wanted was to get out.
"It's time," the woman broke into his thoughts.
"Oh! Yes!" He rose to his feet.
"You better see a doctor, buddy."
"What? What for?"
"That dose you got. It's not good to go walking around with it. Besides it spoils your fun, doesn't it?"
"Oh. Yes," he said. "I'll see a doctor. Thank you."
When he left he didn't see any of the others around so he took a bus and went home. He had a small room near the garage, just a bed and a dresser, a small table and two chairs. And he had a cardboard box under the bed. He dragged the box out, picked out a handful of magazines from it, and sat down to read them.
The publications were worn and falling apart. He handled them carefully, lovingly, turning the pages slowly, letting his eyes feast on them.
There were pictures of men and women in bondage. Most of the subjects were fully dressed, some were stripped to their underthings. He was glad that they weren't naked; being naked was unpleasant, like the woman he had just left. This was decent and clean, the way people were in real life.
But why didn't he see things like this in real life? Where were these people who let themselves get tied up and photographed so their pictures would be printed in magazines? He never ran into anything like this in the city. And even if he had, he would surely get into some kind of trouble because people were always watching you and talking about you, and then the cops would hear about you and put you in the can, although surely there wasn't anything sinful in doing things that gave so much pleasure.
Even though other people had to be hurt....
Now, with the smell of the whore still clinging to his nostrils, he shuddered, once again with the great need to get away and get to someplace where people were beautiful, where they understood that pain and passion were the same.
Maybe ... maybe the same place where these pictures were taken. He flipped one of the copies to the table of contents page. There he read: "Published by Rye Magazines, Las Vegas, Nevada." No street address, but he could understand that. There was only a post office box so that the publishers wouldn't be bothered by cranks and such. People just wouldn't mind their own business.
He opened another magazine. That, too, was published in Las Vegas. And so was another; and another. He closed his eyes and rested his head back. Las Vegas, Nevada. That was truly the land of promise. People were free there, they could dress and talk as they wanted and no one bothered them.
And so, thinking this way, he made his decision to leave the midwest and go to Las Vegas. He was sure that he could find people like himself, good people, honest people, folk who knew the true, clean way of life, people who didn't go running to cat houses to get satisfaction, but who sought it through feeling powerful as they watched someone helpless before them, bound, gagged, unable to help themselves while the master watched and did whatever he wanted to them.
And maybe he would find the panacea there in Las Vegas. There he could find the supreme pleasure of all pleasures. Tying someone up and then watching him die....
Hitchhiking across the country had been rough. He ran into dreary stretches and unkind drivers who passed by him; he suffered hunger and thirst and he slept out in the open on many nights.
He regretted starting the whole thing and would have gone back home except that, having come as far as he had, he just could not turn back. Tired, hungry, dirty, discouraged, he lost sight of his mission, his purpose in traveling to Nevada. There would be no thrills for him, he decided. It was all in his mind and existed nowhere else.
It didn't even come back to him when he sneaked the magazines out of his pack and looked at the pictures that had driven him to this. At one point he thought of tearing them up and throwing them away. But they were old pals to him, the only ones he had ever known, and so he kept them.
It was when he was driving across the desert with the old man in the pick-up that he felt his senses tingle once more. The sight of the empty, vast desert was what did it. Anything could happen here and no one would know, he thought to himself. The thrill shook him, bringing his body even more heat than the sun.
And then, when he saw the rope and felt it in his hands, it had all come to him in a rush. The rope ... the instrument that bound people and made them helpless ... the shovel, so simple a weapon to use ... the old man, so perfect a subject.
He put them all together and became a murderer.
And for the first time in his life, he knew the supreme thrill, the pinnacle of sensation. It was much better than any picture, much more alive than any imaginings. It was perfect.
And it had been so easy.
From now on, he decided, it would be just as easy. The desert was big and lonely, and it was close to Las Vegas, too. He had the camera equipment that he had taken from the pick-up before he abandoned the heap just outside the city. He would get books and study as to how to take pictures and develop them because now he had all the things he needed. And the pictures he would take, of course, would be the kind he had seen in the magazines. All he had to do was find out how to get people to pose for him, and that would be easy to do in Las Vegas.
Before he left the pick-up he made sure he cleaned all the fingerprints from it so that it would never be traced to him. Then he had taken his own pack and the suitcase with the camera and other equipment and resumed his hitchhiking into the heart of the city.
He took a small room, just like the one he had back home. This one was in downtown Las Vegas, in an old and rundown building. But he didn't mind. He was used to things old and run down, and it was also cheap. He didn't need anything fancy for his way of life.
He had a job in a garage in a week. A month later he bought an old Olds because he knew he would need a car for the things he had to do.
Meanwhile, he discovered the main stem and its book stores where magazines and books of the kind he liked were sold. There were also rooms in back where peep-show movies were shown, movies of girls taking off their clothes and striking poses showing off their flat bosoms and thin buttocks.
He loathed the women he saw on the tiny screens as he poured nickels and dimes into the machines so he could see more.
"They all look like that terrible trollop back home," he "told himself. "The only thing to do with broads like that is make them suffer-tie them up and watch them die...."
That was how he decided that from now on his victims would be women. Sure, it had worked out all right with the old man in the desert, but women would be better. After all, the old man had been harmless, and women were terrible.
They deserved to die. That was the only way they could be any good, the only way they could serve any purpose. To die....
He came out of the darkened room behind a book store, blinking his eyes against the glare of lights. The walls of the store were lined with magazines and books with covers that pictured bound and tortured women. He paused to study them, trying to make a choice as to which to buy.
"Can I help you, sir?" asked a voice at his elbow.
It was the night manager of the bookshop, a small, wiry, sleek-haired man. He had a pile of magazines in his hands to place on the shelves.
"Maybe you can," replied the browser. "I do photographs like these. That's my specialty."
"Well, there's a good market for them. I buy quite a few myself if I'm given an exclusive."
"What do you mean-an exclusive?"
The manager arranged the magazines on the shelves. There were only the two men in the store at the moment. He lit a cigarette and said. "There's a lot of stores like mine on this street. I've got a lot of competition, know what I mean?"
"I understand that."
"If a fellow sells me pictures and then sells them to the other stores, well, where do I stand? I don't stand to make any profit at all, do I?"
"I guess not."
"But if a fellow sells only to me, then I make and he makes. I pay pretty good if the shots are good, and I buy all you can bring me. But I mean they gotta be good."
"Oh, mine are fine," the man said.
"Let's see some of 'em."
"I don't have any with me. I just got into town and I left my other work back home. I'm just starting up here."
The manager shrugged as he went back to his counter. "Come see me when you got something to show me," he said.
"I will. Thanks very much." The man started to leave the store when a thought came to him. He turned back. " I need to find some models first. Can you help me locate some?"
The manager studied him with low-lidded eyes. He saw the weakness of the mouth, the glare of the eyes, and then he looked quickly at the man's clothing. This, he decided, was no cop. This was a man who enjoyed taking the kind of pictures they were talking about.
The manager was a good judge of people.
"Yeah," he said. "Maybe I can help you at that." But you gotta give me your word that you'll bring your pictures only to me and not to the other stores on the street. What do you say?"
"That's fine with me. Why should I want to take them anyplace else if you'll buy them from me?"
"That's the idea. Just a minute."
The manager opened a drawer behind the counter and took out a card which he handed to the visitor.
"This is a model agency in town," he said. "They've got a crew of broads there who'll pose for you."
The man studied the card. "Are they expensive?"
"They're cheap. Two bucks an hour, that's all. Listen, don't get the wrong idea. These broads don't pose for anything dirty, know what I mean?"
The man's eyes were black and shining as they looked up from the card. "I think so," he said.
"This is on the up and up, see? It's a legitimate agency and they don't do anything wrong. They'll go for the girls being tied up and gagged, but that's as far as they'll go. Know what I mean?"
"Oh sure. That's all I want, anyway. Just shots of the girls tied so I can sell them to you."
The manager nodded. "Just so we get it straight. I don't want to see the agency in dutch and I don't want to get in dutch myself."
"Sure, we got it straight!" The man pocketed the card.
When he walked out into the garish light of the street, his lips were dry and his body was trembling. He got into his Olds and drove it out of the parking lot, his mind alive with visions of girls bound and gagged ... helpless girls, their eyes staring mutely at him, begging for-mercy, and he, the lord and master, refusing it.
Now he smiled and he sucked air in between the spaces of his teeth. He had to pull the car over to the curb and wait until the pleasurable spasms subsided.