The Last Thing I Saw - Stevenson Richard (книги без регистрации .txt) 📗

Delaney said, “I doubt that OSHA rules apply here.”

“Maybe,” Wenske said, “Mason and Rover think they don’t need guards at night. The door is bolted from the outside, and anyway they think these manacles are escape-proof.”

“Let’s look around. There has to be another way out of here. Once we get out we’ll hot wire the old Cherokee that’s out there—I think I know how—and we’ll be out of here and down on the highway before they even know we’re gone.”

“I could use some fresh air,” Wenske said. “It’s been a while.”

I agreed that he needed airing out, but under the circumstances it felt churlish to bring it up.

We did not risk turning on any more lights, and we made our search of the studio’s interior walls mainly by groping around in the shadows beyond the single lamp in the dungeon set.

“Here’s a door,” Delaney said in a loud whisper. He was in the far rear of the building about thirty feet behind the dungeon.

Wenske and I felt our way back there and found Delaney and his metal door. It even had an exit sign over it.

The door had a simple lock inside its knob. I turned the switch to the open position and slowly turned the knob. I could feel the mechanisms yield, but when I pushed on the door it did not open. I pushed harder, and still nothing.

“I think it’s bolted from the outside, like the one in front.”

Wenske said, “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“All that fresh, cool night air out there. I can practically taste it.”

We searched for another exit but finally were not able to find any.

I said, “What about a window high up? Is there any sign of natural light in here in the daytime?”

“No. I don’t think film studios have windows.”

“Or a vent?”

“Maybe. But a vent we could crawl through? I doubt it.”

“We could tunnel out,” I said. “But it would take quite a while to break through this concrete floor. If we were going to be here for a year, that could be a route out.”

“Let’s not even think about that,” Delaney said.

“And,” Wenske said, “we don’t have a jackhammer or a pick ax.”

I said, “Do you really think Rover and Hively are planning to torture Paul and me in order to spur you on in your script-writing? Meth addicts can act pretty crazy, but that is really round the bend.”

“Mason’s a Stieg Larsson total nut job. He’s read all the books and he’s seen the movies. And when he’s high—which is over half the time—he confuses the real world with Larsson’s fictional world. He identifies with Martin Vanger, the psychotic torturer and killer, and he imagines some gay male Lisbeth Salander who has to show up once in a while and punish him and mete out retribution. That’s what The Boy with the Dragon Tattoo was going to be about. Mason likes to be hurt, and he likes to have the people who hurt him hurt other people. He’s constantly threatened to spank me or even whip me, and the only reason he hasn’t done it is, Hal has apparently disallowed it. I suppose Hal’s afraid his mother might find out. Being exposed for running a torture chamber would not go over well at the Beverly Hills old folks lodge.”

“Does Hal know that Rover and Mason have had people killed to protect Hey Look Media’s reputation? That could also put a damper on the evening when her fellow inmates sit down with Mother Skutnik for an early bird special.”

“I doubt if Hal knows about the murders. That’s something Rover and Mason probably set in motion when they were flying high. They tend to be sober when Hal’s around.”

Delaney was standing by the big garage door, twenty feet wide and about thirty feet high for trundling sets and large pieces of equipment into and out of the studio. Delaney said, “Here’s the switch for raising and lowering the door.”

“It’s probably been deactivated,” Wenske said.

“Should I push the up button?”

Wenske and I looked at each other, and we both said, “Sure.”

Delaney pushed the button, and the big door suddenly began to clank and rattle and roll upward.

Wenske stepped out into the night and cried out, “Oh yes!” His joy came from being outside the dungeon for the first time in weeks and from the sight that welcomed us: Ort, Martine, and Danielle standing in the moonlight next to Ort’s pick-up truck.

“We thought y’all might be up here—Don and Paul anyways—though we didn’t know exactly where to look for you.” Martine said. “But Eddie, is that really you? I can’t believe my eyes!”

Danielle said, “Oh my God, you’re not dead and buried in the canyon!”

Wenske said, “No, no! Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ve been locked in that stinking place for a month.”

“Holy shit!” Martine and Danielle said in perfect unison.

“We better haul our asses on out of here,” Ort said. “Hop in the back of the truck.”

Delaney was having knee problems, so we helped him climb into the cab, and Martine joined Wenske and me in the truck bed.

Ort got in behind the wheel and was turning the truck around when the black van with the three Mexicans rolled out of the darkness next to the lodge and pulled to a halt in front of us. Two of its occupants jumped out with their semi-automatic weapons drawn, and they aimed them directly at Ort.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“You wanted to help us, and I guess we screwed it up for you,” Wenske said to Martine. “Sorry. Now we’re all in trouble.”

Pablo and Blanco appeared now too, trotting down the lodge steps half-dressed, and they also had their guns drawn.

Next it was Rover, his bare gut hanging over the belt holding up his pants, his breast implants glistening in the moonlight.

“Y’all are under arrest,” Ort announced, getting out of the truck. Delaney climbed out of the cab, too, and then Danielle.

“As an honorary Siskiyou County deputy sheriff,” Ort went on, “I arrest y’all’s asses for kidnapping. I’m gonna call the sheriff’s office right now, and you’re gonna have to call a lawyer, Rover, ’cause you’re in legal shit up to your eyeballs.”

Indicating Ort, Rover said to the Mexicans, “Shoot him.”

Martine and Danielle screamed and threw themselves at Ort, and then Rover raised a hand and said, “Okay, wait a minute.”

The guns had been raised and now they were lowered.

“You’re gonna have to shoot us all,” Martine yelled at Rover. “And if you do, Hal is gonna be ripshit. Rover, you are in deep, deep doo-doo already, and if you harm a hair on Ort’s head, or me or Danielle, there is gonna be hell to pay, and you know it. Hal will not put up with crap like that.”

Rover looked confused. “Fuck,” he finally said. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

Danielle said, “Hal is due up here Monday, and he’s gonna have your liver for breakfast if you do anything to disrupt the money supply to HLM. So you better let us all go on our merry little way right now if you know what’s good for Hal and for HLM.”

The porch light went on up at the lodge, and Mason Hively stepped out the front door.

Rover signaled to Hively, who was still in his leather chaps as he approached us looking nettled.

“What’s all this about?” Hively said. “Jesus H. Freakin’ Christ, how am I supposed to meet my Notes from the Bush script deadline if you people keep interrupting the writers and breaking our concentration? Am I right, Eddie? You know what I’m talking about. I should tell these South of the Border pistoleros to shoot all these insensitive people who keep making us miss our deadlines. I’m trying to think, I’m trying to think, I’m trying to think. I mean, how would Martin Vanger handle this? Yeah, I think he’d have the troublemakers shot. Let’s do that right now.”

Ort said, “Hey, wait a minute.”

Hively said, “Pedro, don’t shoot them all. I need Mr. Wenske to finish his script before Hal gets up here and to fucking get it right this time. Eddie, you may step over there.”