Number Nine: Chapter 7

PENTHOUSE PERVERSIONS


FADE IN:

INT. HOTEL ELEVATOR – NIGHT

The Beatles’ BLACKBIRD (White Album) plays in the foreground.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arrive…

CLOSE UP of Ruby, flanked by Minnie and Slim. An elevator operator speaks into an intercom.

INT. HOTEL LOBBY ELEVATOR ENCLAVE – NIGHT

Jake watches the elevator monitor rise to the 54th floor – the penthouse suite.

INT. PENTHOUSE SUITE – NIGHT

A man in a stylish suit looks out over the neon Vegas strip. This is GUIDO LAZERRI, mob boss. The doors open and Ruby is escorted in, Minnie and Slim following.

Fade out BLACKBIRD: “You were only waiting for this moment to arrive…”

Fade in HELTER SKELTER: “When I get to the bottom I go back to the top…”

INSERT MONTAGE – HELTER SKELTER

A whirlwind storm, overturned cars and boats, flying objects, naked dancers on a phallic pole, targeted missiles, explosions, charred bodies, Chernobyl, Exxon-Valdez, Bhopal, dead crows, quarantine bubbles and people in chemical suits. Dark images of masked, leathered bodies and faces intermixed with butchered meat and the pummeled faces of pugilists.

Fade out HELTER SKELTER.

Fade in WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS.

I don’t know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don’t know how you were inverted
No one alerted you…



Despite the name, Guido Lazerri was no cliché. He was definitely not Al Pacino in Scarface, Marlon Brando in The Godfather or James Gandolfini in The Sopranos. He more resembled a European businessman with charm, grace and impeccable taste. He was a smooth talker whose powers of persuasion transcended business and pleasure. He was accustomed to getting his way.

As an illegitimate son of a prominent crime family patron, Guido was ideally positioned to advance in the ranks. It was a time of great turmoil when the government, consumed in a war on terror, left criminal enterprise to its own policing. When the wheels of power turned one way, Guido was protected by his bloodline. When they turned the other way, he was shielded by his status as a bastard son.

He was a master strategist, a sound businessman, a smooth operator and a perverted prick. Before the advent of a pharmaceutical solution to the limp dick syndrome, Guido had a problem with his manhood. His Italian wife had a problem with the back of his hand. She never told anyone (and perhaps she considered it her failing as a woman) but when relatives from the old country came to visit, catching a glimpse of her bruises, it was made clear that if he ever laid hand on her again, he would not live to realize his ambitions.

Guido never laid hand on her again.

Thanks to the wonders of modern pharmacology, Guido became the man he always imagined himself to be. He inhabited strip clubs and hired a harem of prostitutes specializing in the dark arts of erotic perversion.

One of his favorite clubs was Shotgun Slim’s and its owner, Antonio Menendez, became like a son to him – the son he could never produce, even with pharmacological assistance. Like nearly everyone who ever set foot in the place, Ruby Daulton was his favorite dancer but, out of respect for Tony, he never pushed it and Tony never offered.

The girls at the club talked about Guido Lazerri: He paid well but it took a week to wash the stench off the skin. No matter how kinky or masochistic a woman was Lazerri found a way to make her squirm.

Ruby knew enough about Guido to be petrified but she had a well-earned reputation in the biz as a tough girl and she would not give it up now. She would hold out for any chance, however slim, that she would survive the night.

When the boys escorted her through the door of his penthouse suite, she broke free and struck a pose like at third-rate actress at a third-rate theatre.

“Guido!” she intoned as she strutted across the room and planted a wet kiss and full body embrace on the man who held her life in his slimy hands.

Guido smiled and slapped her hard with the back of his hand. When she recovered, he slapped her again in the opposite direction. Ruby refused to fall. She took a couple of staggered steps back, wiped the blood from her lip and smiled back in defiance.

“So that’s how you want to play, hey, baby?”

Guido loved everything about her: the way she talked, the way she walked, the way she smiled, the way she took a blow and came back for more. He had never seen her cry and suddenly that is what he desired more than anything else. He wanted to break her defiant spirit. He turned to the boys, dumbfounded, and growled, “Get out!”

“Boss,” said Slim, “she’s got five grand in her pocket.”

“That’s my money,” said Ruby.

“Where you’re headed,” said Lazerri, “you won’t need it.”

Ruby felt the odds slipping as she reached into her pocket, extended her hand and dropped five grand in poker chips to the carpet. The boys scooped them up and headed out, Slim cackling under his labored breath, closing the door behind them.

“You want to know what happened?” asked Ruby.

“I already know what happened.”

“Tony’s little boys decided to give me a birthday party. They had it all planned.”

“I already know…”

“Tony had an appointment. The party was supposed to end with me bending over my own couch, their loads up my...”

“Shut up, bitch!”

“Instead, Tony dropped by for a surprise visit.”

“You liked it, baby!”

“Yeah, I liked it when he blasted their fucking heads off but I got out before he turned the gun on me.”

“All women like it!”

“Fuck you, Guido!”

Guido was coming on to his pharmaceutical hard on. He was panting like a hungry dog at the gate of a bitch in heat. He wanted her so bad he was drooling on his tailored suit.

“You ran. Why didn’t you call the police?”

“You know why.”

“You’re a liar. All women are liars!”

Hope was waning. Ruby could no longer imagine a happy ending. She had been in kinky situations before. She could smell them. Some she walked into, others walked into her. Guido was kinkier than a homeless man’s undershirt.

“Take your clothes off, baby.”

“What?”

“You want something from me? You want me to make it all go away? You’ve got to give me a reason. You’ve got to give me what I need.”

She was out of options. Time was the only one left. Guido loosened his belt and reached into his pants as Ruby began the slow dance of removing her clothing. She was a singer at heart and her heart was singing the blues as if it was the last song she would ever sing. The guitar inside her soul gently wept.

“Turn around, bitch!”

He did not want to see her face just yet, her eyes, the tears running down her cheeks. He did not want to see her passion, her hatred, her pity or the depth of her humanity. He wanted a plaything, a doll, a warm, bleeding piece of flesh into which he could insert his proof of manhood.

Ruby let the last piece of clothing, her black silk panties, drop to the floor and tried not to gag as she felt Guido’s breath on her neck, his hand on her ass, his sweaty fingers sliding up and down. She tried to imagine cotton candy at the County Fair.

There was a loud crash outside the door. Ruby spun and caught Guido off guard. She kicked as hard as she could, as if the life of her child depended on it, connecting square between his legs, and watched him crumble to the plush white carpet.

Jake came crashing through the door, gun in hand, and delivered a blow to Guido’s head that sent him to another universe where pain and suffering would be his loyal attendants, where the abuser became the abused.

Ruby embraced her hero and painted his face with a thousand kisses, tears streaming from her eyes and visions of horror worse than death fading from her mind.

Life was a strange and brutal place and yet there were men like Jake Jones, women like Ruby Dalton, who proved that it was not all bad. There was kindness, courage, dignity and beauty. And there was hope. There was still hope.

Ruby pulled on her clothing as quickly as she could and the two of them rushed out into the hall, past a cursing Minnie and Slim, hogtied on their slimy bellies, past an unconscious and tied elevator attendant, his body obstructing the elevator door.

They exited on the second floor and continued their escape by the stairwell. It was Helter Skelter and they were on the move. As long as they could keep moving, never stopping, never looking back, Ruby felt they would be all right.

They sprang into a warm and glorious Las Vegas night. It was still a magical city, a city where dreams could still come true, a city where hope was alive until the last bet was wagered, and a city where a single silver dollar could reveal the most precious and rare treasure: a royal flush in ruby red hearts. They were alive and kicking and on this particular night, with the neon lights warming the air around them, hustling through swarms of wide-eyed tourists, it was all that mattered.