The Red Mohawk Page 23

Baby looked up at the ceiling again. The imaginary cinema screen flashed up more images of her parents and the Christmas tree. It made her frown. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said, staring at the images of her parents and feeling an emptiness in the pit of her stomach that she hadn’t felt since childhood.

  ‘You’re Marianne Pincent.’

  He swung the meat cleaver down one more time to free her right hand. She took her eyes off the ceiling and sat upright, dragging her knees up to her chest to cover as much of her naked body as she could. She skittered back across the bed, keeping as much distance as possible between them. The room felt cold all of a sudden, enough to make her shiver. She looked across at him in the hope he would elaborate on the revelation that she was Marianne Pincent, a name she recalled. A name she remembered from childhood, albeit only faintly.

  He pulled the mask off and shook his head to loosen his thick brown hair, which had been flattened underneath it. He wasn’t nearly as grotesque or terrifying without the mask. He put his meat cleaver down on the bed, staining the pink duvet with blood. He ran his hand through his hair and took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m Joey Conrad,’ he said. ‘Your father sent me. I’ve come to take you home.’

  Forty Four

  Munson placed his cell-phone onto the dashboard of his Mercedes. He had tuned it into receive the local police radio frequency. There was plenty of talk going on, mostly back and forth between cops and the woman on the reception at the local station. The crux of it all was that Benny Stansfield had requested for every cop to head towards The Beaver Palace. He’d set up a roadblock and was planning on taking an army of cops to the Palace to confront The Red Mohawk. Munson took one positive from the whole thing. The cops were more interested in killing Joey Conrad than they were in finding him and stopping him from leaving town.

  He started up the car and turned on the headlights. There were no other cars around. He took one last look at the diner. The lights were all turned off. He had left Candy on the floor in the kitchen, tied to a table leg with a cloth gag across her mouth. He still felt bad about leaving her like that, but he reminded himself that she was wrapped up in all of this. She had willingly taken part in the cover up, the hiding of Marianne Pincent. And she’d sell Munson out to Reg or anyone else the minute they turned up at the diner. Besides, with Joey Conrad on the rampage she was probably safer stuck in the diner anyway. The only residents of B Movie Hell that stood a chance of surviving through the night were the ones with the good sense to stay locked in their homes.

  The highway was still fairly quiet but with all the cops likely to show up soon, he had to consider how safe it was to be seen on the road. His thoughts were interrupted by the voice of the receptionist at the police station. She crackled into life again through the radio on his phone.

  ‘Calling all units. A black Mercedes fitting the description of Jack Munson’s car has been spotted parked at the Alaska Roadside Diner. Is anyone in the vicinity?’

  Fucking Hell.

  A male voice answered almost immediately. ‘This is McGready. Me and Simcock are half a mile away. We were heading to The Beaver Palace but we can make a stop and check it out. We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Thanks Ken.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Ken.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘If you see Munson…. if he’s there, the chief says to shoot on sight. He cannot be allowed to leave B Movie Hell.’

  ‘Got it Stephanie. Over.’

  Just as Munson had suspected and Pincent had more or less confirmed, the cops were after him. He was on his own in B Movie Hell with only one possible ally and that was a serial killer in a Halloween mask whose mental state meant he was completely unreliable. It made Munson smile. He hadn’t felt so alive in years.

  He switched off the headlights on his car. If the cops were looking for his Mercedes then he had to do everything possible to keep a low profile. He pulled out of the diner’s parking lot and on to the highway. He considered the possibility of stealing a car. The cops were looking for his black Mercedes. Driving around with the lights off would make him hard to spot from a distance but it might not be the best way to evade them. The car lot from which the Red Mohawk had stolen a car earlier was probably unmanned right now, but it was a couple of miles back down the road. It was too risky. And besides, he needed to get to The Beaver Palace as soon as possible. That was where the action was.

  It was hard to believe after all these years that Marianne Pincent was being held there. Munson remembered what had happened like it was only yesterday. He remembered vowing to do everything he could to help find her. He had meant it at the time too, but after six months with absolutely no leads he had given up the ghost. Pincent hadn’t. Hell, from the sounds of it he’d thought of nothing else ever since. Everyone else had presumed that a girl with such an identifiable birthmark would have been easy to find. When she hadn’t shown up after a few months it hadn’t been unreasonable to work under the assumption that she would never be found. Most folks quietly believed that she was buried in a shallow grave somewhere. Everyone that is, except her father.

  After driving in darkness with no headlights for about two miles and not encountering another vehicle or pedestrian he finally saw some signs of life. Up ahead around a bend he saw flashing blue and red lights. In his rear view mirror he saw another one appear in the distance behind him almost immediately. The blue light up ahead wasn’t moving in any direction. It had to be the Benny Stansfield roadblock. This was Munson’s cue to get off the highway. He steered his car off the road and into the woodland, disappearing behind a clump of bushes just before the police car behind him raced past with its siren blaring.

  He parked up out of sight of the road and switched off the radio on his phone. He grabbed the phone, checked he still had bullets in his handgun and then climbed out of the car.

  He had managed to avoid being spotted by either of the squad cars, but there was no way he would get past that roadblock. He was going to have to go around it. And if he was going to make it to The Beaver Palace, he was going to have to do it on foot. And quickly.

  He crept through the woodland towards the flashing blue lights, making sure he never ventured too close to the highway. If he was spotted he was liable to get killed pretty quick. “Shoot on sight” the bitch at police HQ had said.

  The blue lights continued lighting up the night sky but the siren on the squad car that had just arrived was switched off. There followed a moment of beautiful silence that ended all too quickly. Munson heard the sound of car doors opening and closing up ahead.

  He trod carefully to avoid any loud snapping twigs and crept up to a spot where he hid behind a large tree so he could hear what was being said. At first all he heard was little more than small talk, until finally someone said something that pricked his ears up.

  ‘Here comes Randall.’

  ‘He’ll be pissed,’ another voice replied. ‘He still hasn’t had a night off.’

  Sure enough Munson heard another vehicle approaching. Coming round a bend in the road was a metallic blue pickup truck. It bounded down the highway rattling and banging as it went. The driver pulled over and parked up by the side of the road behind the two squad cars not far from where Munson was hiding. Munson ducked out of sight, careful not to make a noise. He heard the truck door open and through the trees he saw a tubby old guy in a pair of denim dungarees and a red shirt jump out onto the ground. It was Randall, in his civvies.

  ‘What’s going on Benny?’ Randall asked.

  ‘The Red Mohawk is at The Beaver Palace,’ Benny replied.

  ‘So then why the fuck are you waiting around here?’

  ‘We’re waiting for backup. The riot team are coming. We’re gonna take that sonofabitch down.’

  ‘You’ve gotta be kidding,’ Randall groaned. ‘That psycho will have killed everyone by the time you guys get there. Let me go on ahead. I’ll shoot the fucker down with my new shotgun.’


  ‘Can’t let you do that just yet Randall.’

  ‘Why the fuck not?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to call The Beaver Palace for the last five minutes. No one is answering. It could be chaos there already.’

  ‘Goddamn it Benny. All the more reason to let me through then! This guy killed my partner last night, and he’s killed a couple more of our guys today. I can’t just stand by here while you guys dither and fuck about. Let me through. I’m in the mood to bag me a serial killer.’

  ‘Calm down Randall for fuckssake.’

  ‘You calm down Benny. I’m not a cop tonight. This time it’s personal.’

  ‘Jeezus! Could you be any more of a cliché?’

  ‘Yes I could. I’ve always followed the rules, done everything by the book. Well not any more. From now on, I’m a cop living life on the edge. If the chief has to call me into his office to chew me out in the morning, well that’s fine. I play by my own rules from now on.’

  ‘You’ve been drinking haven’t you?’

  ‘All afternoon.’

  ‘And watching Lethal Weapon again by the sounds of it.’

  ‘Bits of it. And Die Hard.’

  Another nearby cop threw an opinion into the mix. ‘Benny, I say let him through. Randall is badass. If he wants to go on in ahead of us I ain’t got no beef with that.’

  While Benny, Randall and the other officers argued the merits of whether or not Randall should be allowed to go on ahead to The Beaver Palace, Munson took his chance and crept out of the woodland up to the side of Randall’s pickup truck. He hauled himself up quietly onto it and rolled into the back. He landed on something soft and ducked down out of sight, laying flat out on his back staring up at the stars and listening in on the rest of the conversation.

  ‘Okay, Randall. You go on ahead. I’ll try calling Mellencamp again to let him know you’re coming. If he’s still alive, that is.’

  ‘Good. You do that. I’ll see you there,’ said Randall.

  Munson heard Randall’s boots crunching on the small stones on the highway as he walked back towards the pickup truck. He climbed in and slammed the door shut behind him. He muttered some clichéd lines from a few eighties action movies to himself before he started up the engine. Pretty soon he was driving recklessly along the highway to The Beaver Palace with Munson hitching a ride in the back.

  Forty Five

  Clarisse was naked from the waist down and bent over the reception desk in The Booty Parlour. Mack the Slasher was standing behind her with his pants around his ankles. Silvio Mellencamp had given him a ten minute break and told him that he could have any one of the girls he wanted. Unfortunately for Clarisse, Mack always wanted her. And always from behind, over her desk.

  She was holding on tight to the end of the desk and using her elbows to hold down some of her notepads and stationery (all of which often ended up on the floor during one of Mack’s vigorous poundings). He wasn’t blessed with any kind of rhythm, sexual technique, or imagination for that matter, all he knew was brute force, and only in a back and forth motion. And when he slammed his hips forward while fucking her he did tend to make the desk shake quite violently.

  From the second he had pulled her underwear off and thrown it away wantonly in the throes of passion, the phone on her desk had been ringing almost non-stop. At the last count she had missed six calls. Mr Mellencamp didn’t like her missing calls but seeing as it was his fault she was being rammed from behind by his right hand man, she felt justified in not picking up the phone.

  Several of the other girls had walked past and ignored the ringing phone. It was a well known fact that when Mack was fucking Clarisse over the desk (which was often) he couldn’t climax if anyone was talking, so someone answering the phone and having a conversation in front of him would have thrown him right off his stroke.

  ‘I think someone’s desperate to get through Mack,’ Clarisse said through gritted teeth, while stopping a stapler from sliding off the desk.

  ‘Shut up,’ Mack snapped. ‘I’m nearly done. Stop putting me off.’

  ‘Well hurry up then.’

  As usual, Mack’s technique wasn’t doing much for Clarisse, so while she pretended to have an orgasm she thought about Baby. The word was out that a doctor had arrived and was in Baby’s room right now performing an abortion. Mack had refused to discuss it with her, but there was a hell of a lot of noise coming from Baby’s room down the hall. A couple of the other girls were loitering near it to see if they could hear what was going on. The only thing that seemed to be coming out of the room was a lot of loud music. From where Clarisse was, with her face partly buried in the desk it was hard to make out what song it was. She definitely hadn’t heard any screams from Baby but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been any. It was just because the music was so damned loud.

  Eventually the song that had been playing so loudly (and distracting Mack) came to an end. A brief silence filled the reception area and Mack was finally able to shoot his load without any noise distracting him. He let out a relieved sigh.

  ‘That’s it. I’m done,’ he said triumphantly, pulling up his pants. He slapped Clarisse across the ass, like he always did, then leant forward and kissed her on the ear. His lips were drenched in his own saliva, It felt cold and sticky on Clarisse’s earlobe.

  ‘I’ll be upstairs if you need me,’ he said, buttoning up his pants. ‘See ya later.’

  He trotted off to the elevator by the side of the reception area. Clarisse took a few seconds to catch her breath. She remained in position, bent over the desk holding onto a stapler in one hand and a hole punch in the other. When she heard the elevator make a pinging sound as the doors opened, she stood up and straightened the items on her desk. Mack stepped into the elevator and disappeared up to one of the higher floors.

  Once everything on her desk was straightened and back in its rightful place she took a look around to see what had happened to her underwear. The standard attire for working on reception varied from semi naked to virtually naked, so most of the time Clarisse simply wore a bra and thong. She still had the bra on but as usual Mack had tossed the thong away somewhere that might take her five minutes to find it. In the past she’d discovered some of her thongs on top of lampshades, in plant pots and on one occasion on a blind customer’s head.

  She didn’t get far before the phone rang again. It had stopped ringing at about the same moment as Mack had emptied his balls. Clarisse sighed. Someone was obviously desperate to get through. The hunt for her thong would have to wait a little while. She picked up the receiver.

  ‘Hello Beaver Palace.’

  ‘Clarisse? Is that you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Benny Stansfield. Put me through to Silvio, right now.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘You’ve got a doctor in the house.’

  ‘Yes, I know. He’s in with Baby right now.’

  ‘Clarisse, it’s not a doctor. The doctor’s dead. You’ve got the Red Mohawk in there.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Put me through to Silvio and get the fuck out of there!’

  Forty Six

  Silvio Mellencamp finally felt relaxed. He was slouched back in the chair behind his desk with a cigar in one hand and a balloon snifter glass half full of cognac in the other. He closed his eyes and his face broke out into a broad smile. And then typically the phone rang again.

  He sighed and placed his glass of cognac down on the desk. ‘Never a minute’s peace,’ he grumbled to himself.

  He kept his eyes closed but felt around on his desk until his hand settled on the phone. He picked up the receiver and put it to his ear.

  ‘Silvio speaking.’

  ‘Hi Silvio. It’s Benny. Are you okay?’

  Mellencamp opened his eyes. ‘Who said you could stop sucking?’ he snapped.

  ‘Pardon me?’ said Benny.

  ‘Not you Benny. I was talking to Selena.’ Beneath his desk, on her hands and knees was Selena, one of the
girls from The Booty Parlour in the basement. She was fairly new and not familiar with Mellencamp’s rules about blowjobs.

  ‘Sorry,’ she replied, massaging his balls a little before sliding his dick back into her mouth.

  ‘Honestly,’ said Mellencamp. ‘You just can’t get the staff these days Benny.’

  ‘Silvio. Listen to me, the Red Mohawk is in there with you!’

  ‘What?’ Mellencamp glanced down to make sure it was Selena’s mouth wrapped around his dick. Fortunately it was. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘That doctor who came to do Baby’s abortion. He’s dead. I found him in the trunk of a car. The guy who killed him and took his place is The Red Mohawk. He’s in your building right now.’

  ‘Holy shit.’ Mellencamp could tell from Benny’s voice that he wasn’t joking around. The cop was speaking at a hundred miles an hour. ‘Are you guys on your way here?’

  ‘We will be soon,’ Benny replied. ‘I’m just waiting for the riot squad guys to show up. Randall is already on his way, but in the meantime make sure you stay away from that doctor!’

  Before Mellencamp could answer, the door to his office burst open. Mack strolled in with a big grin on his face.

  ‘Hey boss,’ he said.

  ‘Mack. Benny says the doctor is dead.’

  Mack frowned. ‘No he’s not. I just let him and Reg into Baby’s room. He looked fine.’

  ‘That wasn’t the doctor. Seriously who told you to stop sucking?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I was talking to Selena.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Selena called out cheerfully from under the desk. ‘Hi Mack.’

  ‘Hi Selena. How’s it going?’

  Mellencamp took a puff on his cigar, then placed it in the ash tray on his desk and used his free hand to push Selena’s head back to where it should be. ‘Mack, get everyone down to Baby’s room. That doctor who went in there is an imposter. Dr Chandler is The Red Mohawk. Send everyone down there and kill that sonofabitch.’