DIRTY SALLY
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Part One
Black Friday
Friday,
September 9, 1988. 3:30 A.M.
Sands Motel, Austin, Texas
Mice
and roaches bustled around her on the rug. She couldn't
make out if they were real or not but she noticed
a man bouncing up and down on her, all sweat and moans
and after-shave. Hmm.
Her
eyes lit up a vision, a distant memory of a little
girl—her—and a littler boy, giggling in
a wading pool. A black charm on a string hangs around
the girl's neck. She cradles the boy in her arms as
the camera snaps and her vision flashes white.
- - -
Outside
in the dark, Armand Tejani waited under a palm tree,
tapping his eelskin shoes and wiping his heavy palms
on his soggy black lapels.
"Come on, man! " he whispered. "How
long can this take?" He rubbed his nostrils,
hopped on one foot, eyed the numberless motel room
door. Sands Motel, a little bit of Vegas splash right
here in South Austin. Whores and junkies didn't amount
to much of a tourist attraction-vacationers from Elgin
and Abilene abandoned the rotting building years ago
to the vermin, mold, drunks and, just now, to a faceless
john and one very special girl.
The
door finally inched open, the john, his cartoon-broad
forehead and narrow chin peeking out, blinking like
a freckled mole, a rich, crazy cokehead in a chalk
blue seersucker suit. The john closed the door behind
him and scampered down a dark side street, clenching
and grinding his teeth and checking his fly.
Tejani
broke for the door. Finish this one clean, baby, this
is the easy part. Too easy, for thirty big
ones. That's what tipped him off. There was more to
be made, lots more. They were paying too well for
part one; they'd pay wicked for part two, the part
they didn't know about yet. He'd walk off with a fortune,
blow town on a blast of 'caine, Vegas—New York,
anywhere but Atlanta. Maybe clean up for a while,
get some sleep. He hugged the door: silence. Then
he turned the knob and slipped inside.
The
room stank gag-level Winos, probably, used the toilet
after the plumbing got shut off. A streetlamp shining
through the bare window caught a wood roach the size
of a woman's thumb tearing across a gray stucco wall.
On a light square of carpet where a bed once stood,
the nude girl lay, idly sucking some charm on a string
around her neck. Her face showed only a trace of what
Tejani saw in the photo: icy blue eyes, blue-black
hair, skin like polished gold. Now her skin hung loose
on her like someone else's clothes, her black hair
twisted against her head and neck, her eyes stared
dim and she stank like rotten meat. If he asked her
name, she wouldn't understand the question. No trouble
tonight. That seersucker john paid her in heroin.
Her
glassy gaze finally landed on Tejani. When he snapped
off his belt knife, she watched the blade glimmering
under the lamppost light. The string around her neck
broke, and she choked for a second on the loose charm
before she swallowed it hard, the string still tangled
around her finger.
Tejani
gently lifted the matted black hair away from her
neck with the blade and she leaned her head back.
The sight warmed him so much that he stroked her head.
He sheathed the knife and instead took the heavy plastic
garbage bag from his jacket pocket, pulled it over
her head and squeezed it tight around her throat.
First
the bag rose and fell with her breath. She struggled
feebly and grabbed at her face. Tejani climbed on
top of her to pin her arms and legs down as he wrapped
the bag tighter around her neck, his pelvis pressed
against hers. She kicked out and shook. He felt himself
growing hard as her body rose and fell.
Atlanta
Federal Prison. 1986. Four crackers hold Tejani down
on the toilet floor: A fifth on his back burns Tejani's
neck with a cigarette, yelling, "You sent me
up for nothin'—for NOTHIN'!" and finally
pulls Tejani's pants down and rips into him, growling,
"Welcome to the Joint, cop!"
Tejani
shook with terror as the stick of a girl writhed under
his powerful trunk. He squeezed the bag tighter, forcing
the images from his brain when she jolted for the
last time, and he came hard against her as her muscles
relaxed and she lay still.
Now
he'd done what he was paid for. Little bitch,
he thought, as he wrapped the plastic around her limp
body. Little nobody. You're worth more dead than
you were alive.
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