His fingers searched his pocket and removed a small tool. He jimmied the lock twice, just as he had done at the Days Inn with Dr. Bruce Grey. This time, however, he did not allow the sound of the lock being disengaged to be audible. Surprise in combat, George had learned long ago, always gave you the upper hand. Bruce Grey had been suspicious, so a simple knock on the door would not have brought him in front of the wooden portal unaware. For Bruce Grey had been prepared for an attack and was on his guard. But having the door smashed against him during a brief moment when he felt safe, when he thought the door was secure and no one was in front of it, that had been all George needed.
This victim, however, would not be suspicious. Unlike Grey, he had no idea that death had crept down his hallway. A knock was all George would need.
With the lock made useless, George put the small device back in his pocket and knocked.
A voice called out. “One moment.”
George heard the victim coming to the door. He wondered whether the man was so stupid he would open the door without asking who it was. But the voice called out again.
“Who’s there?”
George knew that the man was standing right behind the door now, probably leaning forward to look through the peephole. Without hesitation, George threw his full weight into the door. The wooden planks crashed against the man standing behind them, knocking him to the floor on the other side of the room.
George moved quickly. He closed the door and pounced upon his prey. His hand gripped the man’s neck and he began to squeeze. There was a quick, choking noise and then silence. The man struggled, lashing out with his hands and kicking, but his blows were wild and imprecise. They did not bother George.
Maintaining his grip on the man’s throat, George lowered his face to within inches of his victim’s. “There is only one way I will allow you to live,” George said, his voice chillingly monotonous, as though he were reading a prepared text. “And that is if you do everything I tell you. Deviate from what I say and you will die. Do you understand?”
The man’s eyes bulged out from lack of oxygen and a surplus of fear. He managed a nod.
“Good. I will let you go. Call out or try to escape and you will know a pain very few have ever experienced.”
He let go. The man rolled back and forth, retching uncontrollably.
George stood and watched the man’s agony with something approaching boredom. “We are going down to my car now,” he said, when he thought his victim could understand, “just like a couple of buddies cruising the town. Do as I say without question and you won’t be hurt.”
The man nodded. His immediate obedience made things so much easier. If George had been forced to kill the man here, he would have to clean up the blood, get rid of any possible clues, and worst of all, drag a body to his car without anybody seeing. Much more difficult.
They crossed the street together and George opened the trunk. “Get in.”
“But—”
George grabbed the man’s hand and squeezed, breaking two bones. With his free hand George covered the man’s mouth and snuffed out his scream. Then George readjusted his grip on the shattered hand, squeezed a little tighter, forcing the broken bones to scrape against each other and rip at the tendons. The man’s face went white.
“I told you to do what I say without question. Will you remember that now?”
The man nodded quickly and ducked into the trunk. George knew the man wanted to ask if there would be enough air once the trunk was closed, but he did not dare. He had experienced pain. Pain, George had learned, can be a greater threat than death.
George looked down the street. Three men had just circled the corner and were coming toward them. They looked pretty wasted, each walking a wobbly line that more often than not crossed the others’. George closed the trunk and drove away.
He found an abandoned road that he had used for this purpose before. He parked the car and grabbed the knife from the glove compartment. As per the instructions given to him on the phone, George slipped on surgical gloves and a mask. He felt like a doctor, preparing for a major operation.
“Scalpel,” he said out loud. He laughed at his own joke.
George got out of the car and went toward the trunk. This was the part of the job George found most intriguing. He always wondered what was going through the victim’s mind. A little earlier, his world had been normal, average, seemingly safe. Suddenly, he had been threatened, assaulted, and locked in a trunk. No longer did he have any say in what happened to him.
What was going through his mind?
It was a fleeting thought. In the end, George knew it didn’t matter. For George only the finished job mattered.
When George opened the trunk, the man looked up at him with the eyes of a trapped animal.
“Wh-wh-what . . . ?”
George put his finger to his mask-covered lips. “Shhh.”
George reached down and grabbed the man’s head to hold still. Then he gripped the knife and placed it below the man’s nose, the cool blade directly below the nostrils. He lowered the handle toward the mouth, almost touching the lips, and drove the blade upward. It sliced through the thin tissue, through the cartilage, and into the brain. Blood gushed freely. The body spasmed, but death was instantaneous. The man’s final gaze was locked on George, his eyes wide and uncomprehending.
George tugged the knife out, and just as he had with the first two jobs, he stabbed the body two dozen times. Wet, ripping sounds accompanied his methodical undertaking. George’s face remained calm as he drove the knife home over and over again.
It was all very messy.
George knew that he would have to keep the body in the trunk for the night. Then he would be able to dump it in the appropriate area. With the others, it had not mattered where the corpse was found, but the voice on the phone had given specific instructions to leave this one in the alley behind a gay bar called Black Magic in Greenwich Village. At night, George knew, such places were filled with all sorts of bizarre happenings. They were crowded. He decided it would be safer to dump the body in the daytime when the area was empty.
Early the next morning George awoke refreshed from a wonderful, dreamless sleep. He drove back into the city and pulled up behind the Black Magic bar. A sleazylooking dump, he thought. It reminded him of Patpong Street in Bangkok. Patpong, Bangkok’s famed red-light district, catered to heterosexuals, but everyone knew about the area two blocks farther north devoted exclusively to homos. And Pattaya, the popular Thai beach resort not far from Bangkok, had a whole street jammed with little boys who served their male customers without question or hesitation.