Spider’s Cage (18 page)

Against the wall beyond her was a pile of additional leather goods, including a riding quirt.

Next to these Windrow spotted a truly curious item. It was an empty wire cage draped in leather straps. There seemed to be other cages behind it.

Windrow returned his gaze to the person with the shotgun, and found that he had been quietly watched by the grey eyes as his own eyes had scanned the contents of the room. The two hands still held the shotgun, and its breach had not been closed.

Windrow smiled and moved the ball of his right foot, so that the boot made a little noise against the floor.

The breach snapped to. The eyes hardened. A smile flitted across the face.

“You'll be Jody Dweem,” Windrow said.

A
PLUCKED BROW ARCHED AND FELL.

“How come I'm not dead?” Windrow asked, not without interest.

The two barrels had been aimed at the floor until he'd moved his foot, but they were up now; to Windrow they looked like a pair of water mains being raised by a crane.

The eyes smiled. “Out of bullets, there, for a minute.” The voice was a nasty, cultivated drawl.

Windrow moved his head slightly to indicate the body on the floor behind his chair. “Woodruff lose his nerve? Or did he just find out who was doing what to whom?”

The impulse to pull the trigger flirted in the grey eyes, he could see it.

“Or did he finally realize how crazy his partner really is, and what was happening to everybody else was going to happen to him, too – probably sooner than later?”

Windrow would have liked to let his mind race through the logic of the insanity, over the pieces, past the bodies, beyond the facts, and out the window, preferably with Jodie Ryan, magically. The fantasy had its appeal. The gun level with his face now, straight out from its master's hip, and the smell of corruption coming from the fabric of the chair brought all the fluids to the surface of the walls of Windrow's stomach. He knew if he stared hard enough he would begin to think
he could see the noses of the two shells waiting at the other ends of their two gaping conduits. That the muzzle of the gun floated steadily less than ten feet from his face meant that accuracy was a foregone conclusion. Still, there was a slight edge in his favor; in the choice of a long-barreled gun at this range, even if it was sawed off, all he would have to do was move faster than, say, light.

Then again, maybe Dweem would have an epileptic fit and drop the gun.

He concentrated on the eyes.

“Where's Sal?”

The eyes narrowed.

“Out back? In the Bay? In somebody's gas tank?”

The forefinger tightened on the front trigger, the middle finger tightened on the rear trigger.

It's to be both barrels, right in the face. A little voice announced it in Windrow's head. His system flipped to protest the observation, but his mind overrode that decision. He forced the tension to flow out of himself, as if it were a charge draining from his skeleton. The knotted muscles at his clavicle distended, his shoulders lowered immeasurably, his lower jaw moved back into place—even the tiniest hint of a complex smile took command of his lips, and he said, “You never got over O'Ryan going straight and getting rich while he was at it, did you Dweem.”

He phrased the remark as a question, but inflected it as a declaration, not as a supposition, but a conclusion, as a matter of scientific fact, as if he were displaying a length of psycho-sociological thread whose characteristics were plain enough for anyone to see.

The eyebrows arched, the eyes narrowed, then flared, and the mouth opened. “Hah!” exploded between the bared teeth. “I didn't think you had it in you.” Dweem laughed a
short elliptical laugh. The fingers relaxed against the blades of the triggers. “Oh my,” he said, chuckling. “Oh my goodness.” The gun lowered just a little. “What a tough guy. Mm!” He shook his head. “I'm on the wrong track, here. This isn't going to hurt at all, the way I'm going about it. And after all the trouble you've been to me. Tsk.” He clucked his tongue.

Windrow, tense in the apparent reprieve, found himself somewhat gouged by this last remark. “Trouble?” he expostulated, incredulous. “
I
caused
you
a lot of trouble? Where the hell do you get that? If you'd left off killing people this week, I'd still be nursing a sore face through a swimming pool investigation—.”

“Sure, sure, honey,” Dweem said distractedly, “Is that what you were doing at Pammy-baby's:
cleaning her pool
?”

Windrow's mind began to sound like the room where they keep the relays at the telephone company, clicking all the time.

“You made the phone call.”

“
Very
astute.”

“Was it to tell Woodruff that Jodie—” Dweem gave Windrow a sharp look at the mention of the name, “that Jodie had gotten away from you long enough to call me?”

Dweem said nothing, but moved toward his left, keeping the gun pointed at Windrow's face. But Windrow had it now, he could feel the story assuming its shape as he told it, his narrative was like blowing air into a nozzle at one end of an inflatable hotel room, and watching all the furniture slowly rise up and assume its shape. Pictures on the wall, the flickering TV, an ashtray with burning cigarette, the bed, the Bible, a lamp. He kept talking.

“That telephone call wasn't planned. Woodruff was in a lather about my arrival until you called. When he told you I was there, talking about a second will nobody knew existed,
the two of you cooked up a story to side track me until you could find out what was going on. You knew Jodie had phoned me that morning, and have planned to eliminate me since. But then you jumped the gun. Well, the laugh's on you Dweem. I didn't know boo about a second will. That was just a line to get the Woodruffs to talk to me.”

Dweem took another step to his left.

Windrow wiggled the tingling fingers of his right hand. “Lessee, lessee, how'd it go. You found out the terms of the first will after everybody left the cremation in Las Vegas, after Woodruff had gotten Pamela to marry him. It left the works to Jodie, and all bets were off: Pamela was useless, Jodie was hot.” He paused, then added carefully. “But you didn't kill Pamela out of frustration. You killed her out of jealousy.”

Dweem still facing Windrow, had his back to the three cages. Cocking his right leg behind him, he used the toe of his boot to slide one cage away from the wall. Windrow watched this maneuver, registering the distance between himself and Dweem. Jodie Ryan slumped between them, slightly to Windrow's right, breathing raggedly.

Dweem paused. “Do go on, Mr. Windrow,” he said, grimacing pleasantly. “This is a most interesting exegesis—although, I think, you personally will find its confirmation rather… creepy.”

Windrow hesitated. The cage Dweem had advanced contained a large grey tarantula. The spider remained motionless on the bottom of the cage, despite its being moved. Windrow thought, rather hopefully, that it may have just arrived from the taxidermist.

As if perceiving this thought, Dweem sat on his heels behind the cage and tickled the spider's behind with one of his fingers. Immediately, the tarantula lowered its head,
raise its rear end, and scrubbed itself vigorously with its two back legs. Windrow stared at the spider for a moment, then looked at Dweem, who was watching him.

“Please continue, Mr. Windrow, with your version of the events leading up to this tableau.” He chuckled and stood up, adding, “I think that's quite clever, calling this a tableau, don't you? All the players are quite motionless, quite frozen in their respective poses, even down to our friend here, Boris, the hairy mygalomorph, himself.” Not taking his eyes from Windrow, Dweem lowered his long eyelashes at the tarantula, which, as he spoke, had ceased to move. “Perhaps the humblest of our ensemble—if not least among us.” He sighed. “Poor Woody,” he said. “Only I, the director,” he drew out the pronunciation of this last word, articulating each syllable, “freely move about the set. All the other players are quite—shall we say—inert?” Dweem stood and crooked one arm under the shotgun.

Windrow drew a breath and continued. “But first, to protect yourself, you tried to kill me. You knew you had a fair chance of getting away with it. No one but Woodruff knew who you were; Sal had already taken a poke at me …” Windrow paused, then said, “That was stupid, Dweem. Just plain stupid. I don't think your decisions are always… rational.”

Dweem glowered at him. His eyebrows jerked about like pennants in stormy weather.

“Then, thinking I was dead, you killed the poor Neil woman… Stupid. Have you ever considered your thought process as being irrational? No? How about … deranged?”

Dweem tightened his jaw, but said nothing. With the toe of his boot, he slid a second cage away from the wall, until it was beside the first.

“Lobe was harder. Why? What was it? Did you try to
con him into selling Jodie Ryan's contract to Woodruff? Or directly to you? Probably to yourself, right? And he wouldn't go for it?”

Dweem was silent. He gently tapped the second cage with the toe of his boot: once, twice. The second time, the tarantula in this cage threw itself at the boot toe with such startling alacrity that Windrow involuntarily twitched. He thought that the spider must have sprung six inches straight up from a dead standstill. Again it threw itself at the teasing boot toe, and Windrow noticed that this tarantula was different from the other one. It was entirely covered in coarse hairs like the first, but this spiders' hair was black except for a bright band of halloween orange around the middle of each leg.

Dweem glanced as if modestly through his lashes at Windrow. “Orange-kneed model,” he said quietly, “from Mexico. A female. Particularly vicious. I call her Chi-Chi.”

Windrow ignored this and took up the thread of his story. “The plan at its simplest stage was to get Jodie's contract from Lobe cheap, then sell it to the highest bidder. Jodie Ryan herself, with her sudden wealth, would be chief among these bidders, of course.”

“Of course.” muttered Dweem, disappointed in the effect the spider was having on Windrow.

“You might even have offered it to her exclusively.”

“Might.”

“But that deal was coming unraveled before you even got started, because you needed Pamela Neil's cut of O'Ryan Petroleum to back the purchase. You tried to bluff Lobe anyway, but he probably had similar plans of his own. Then you threatened him. Effectively, too. I saw him. He knew how crazy you are. He was right. You killed him.” Windrow shook his head. “Dumb, dumb, Dweem. Dumb.”

Dweem looked menacingly at Windrow. Windrow returned the gaze.

“That's what happened, right? When you and Manny went to see Lobe, he wouldn't even give you the time of day. You walked into his office ready to talk deal. You ran some number; you're big time east coast TV connection talking syndication, staff of tunesmiths, satellite uplinks, simulcast holograms on Mars, etcetera. Woodruff is the connection who knows the talent, Jodie Ryan. And the agent, Mr. Lobe, is the key to her future. Everybody's in for a cut, even Jodie. Hah.” Windrow waved his hand, his right one. It seemed to help the circulation. Dweem steadied the shotgun. “He laughed you out of the office: Why?”

Dweem scowled. The musculature beneath his skin worked peculiar lines in his features, and Windrow could suddenly see clearly where the plastic surgeon had begun and left off work on Jody Dweem's face.

“Why?” Dweem repeated icily, through clenched teeth.

Windrow almost interrupted the question with the answer. “Because Lobe knew the whole story, top to bottom, before you two turkeys had the car turned around in the street to drive over there. Am I right?”

Dweem abruptly squatted under the leveled shotgun and placed a third cage, the one with the straps, next to the cage containing the orange-kneed tarantula. One end of the cage was hinged. He opened it.

“How did he happen to be in possession of such a hotline? Easy. Pamela Neil bought her cocaine from her maid, Concepción Alvarez, who bought it from Harry Lobe. Everybody knows everybody. It's so simple it makes me feel stupid to think about it.”

“Hmph.”

“But not for the reasons
you
think it's stupid, you nelley
jerk-off,” Windrow continued angrily. “Lobe didn't want to play ball, so you used the bomb you brought along to scare him with. You were thinking if he didn't want to sell out cheap enough or not at all, you'd have this goddamn time bomb go off in his wastebasket at three a.m., when nobody was around. He'd get scared enough to sell out. But he was completely hip to your plans because Concepción Alvarez called him up and told him about it. More to the point, he wasn't going to get pushed around by a nelly cowgirl and a pansy art dealer, no matter
what
the deal was. Am I right?”

Dweem curled his lip but said nothing.

“But you still needed his signature. So the bomb must have gone off too early. A mistake. Or was it? Was that when Woodruff noticed how crazy you are? A deal's a deal, right? A little intimidation, a little extortion—that's business. Business is money. But blowing people up because they won't make a deal? That's not business, that's murder, that's insane.

“So you killed Lobe. Then you killed the Alvarez girl. And you killed Pamela Neil, way back into last week. You tried to kill me. You just killed Thurman Manny goddamn Woodruff. You've probably killed Sal. And why?
Why
? For revenge? You killed five goddamn people because they got in the way of your imagination, and in my case, because you only
thought
I was in the way of the way you
thought
things were. You killed five people going on six because they beat you at your own goddamn game, and half of them didn't even know there was a game going on. You're sick, Dweem, STUPID AND SICK—!”