by Chris Bauer
“Fact three is…”
She turned her hand palm up. A sliver of surgical steel appeared there, slapped in place by her nurse assistant. Iota Jean relocated Charlotte’s gun from Randall’s chest, produced a pair of surgical scissors and hovered, the scissors in her hand. She and Charlotte waited.
Penny reached for his waist. Shirt fabric and love handle cinched together in her tight, two-handed grip. She pulled him to the center of the mattress, her lady nails sinking into his flesh, Randall grimacing. Held there, Iota Jean moved in with the scissors, worked her way up a pant leg from the bottom, cut away his trousers, one leg then the other, the scissors catching skin and drawing calf and thigh blood the more he resisted. His pants gone, she repeated the process with his boxers, Randall sweating, spitting, cursing, and writhing until he was naked from the waist down.
Iota Jean waited now with a syringe, next to Charlotte. Randall’s engorged, Viagra-perky organ had nowhere to go but up. Yes, they were staring, Randall realized. He was too.
“You can’t—no—please—”
“Fact three is, we decided to clean up the gene pool, dearie, and we do it one dirty set of genes at a time. Seems a shame, physically gifted as you are, but with monsters like you, we have no choice. So I’m thinking you’ll choose my approach toward this end, which is a bit less absolute, rather than…”
Charlotte repositioned the scalpel handle to between her thumb and forefinger. The light from the ceiling fan bulbs glinted off the surgical steel, strobing Randall’s face.
“... rather than, you know,” she nodded at the gun against his temple, “Dody’s alternative. Except I’ve occasionally been wrong about these things. So answer this last question for me please.
“Would you like for it all to end here, as a dead rooster, or would you like to give it a go as a live hen in a men’s prison? Hmm?”
58
I melted into the passenger seat soon as I powered it to the recline position, started drifting off.
Andy’s Jeep. Basic black and oversize, its SUV ride was comfortable in my altered state, but even in my haze I knew it was taking too long to get where we were going. We’d been driving close to an hour. My skepticism came from a bout of your garden-variety paranoia à la hospital anesthetic mixed with my Tourette’s meds. Andy’s story: he wanted me to sober up.
My eyes opened wider. I swiped at some slobber, checked my breath.
“Here. Gum,” Andy said, anticipating me.
“I need mouthwash.”
“You need a hazmat shower,” he said, smiling. “Anything else is a waste of time.”
“Give me the gum, wise guy.”
My head was less fuzzy but my immobilized broken arm throbbed like it had been pounded with meat mallets. I powered the seat upright for a return to the real world. Greeting me were warm, yellow shafts of dawn reaching with beckoning arms through majestic trees, caressing my face and my heaving bosom like delicious kisses from a naked Adonis, his hot sensual breath teasing me with hints of glistening spearmint, and misty pine oil, and—
Damn it, still afloat from the meds. Shit had to stop, right now.
I went for a bottle in the cup holder, splashed some water on my face, splashed some more, dripped some on my head. I dried myself off with my terrycloth sling. Better.
Andy ended a phone chat and dropped his cell into a tray. He pulled the SUV off the road into a small parking lot that faced a large converted warehouse now full of condos. “We’re here,” he announced.
“Here” was a parking space next to my van. Tess sat up straight in the driver’s seat, almost eye to eye with me. Her body language said that as soon as I could get close enough she’d whimper in canine ecstasy, maybe even pee the seat. Fungo’s brutish head appeared next to her. My two furry deputy buddies.
“Tell me again who lives here,” I asked Andy.
“Some friends of mine. Dody for one.”
“You were on the phone. Anything on Linkletter?”
“And those friends and my mother are all doing fine, thanks for asking,” he said, the sarcasm subtle as a hammer. “Guess the jury’s still out about your bounty.”
I got out, opened my van door, and lifted Tess into the crook of my good arm. I let Fungo nuzzle his head against my waist. They wanted out of the van. I redeposited Tess in the seat and apologized to them both with a smoothing of their ears, but my two warriors needed to stay here a little longer. I retrieved my pistol-grip pump shotgun, one-handing it from a gun rack on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Not an ideal weapon considering my battered left arm, but tough noogies, it was all I had, so I needed to make it work. When I straightened up I faced Andy, close in. He smelled good, a clean, after-shave good, even after the night we’d had. I smelled like hospital disinfectant, sweat, and the town dump. His hands went to my shoulders, him not trusting my legs, was looking to steady me, and then… there was this kiss on my lips, less passionate than before, more delicate, and with more concern. I reopened my eyes when we finished, looked deep into his. They were pleading with me.
“Counsel, there’s something more you need to know.”
We were close now, his hands gripping my hips, where they’d need to be if he were ready for the start of some spirited monkey sex, but also where they’d need to be if I lost my balance. He had my complete attention, and it appeared I had his.
“That call you’ve been expecting from the State Police,” he said, “looking for details from you about yesterday’s mugging at the pharmacy… It’s not coming. Calls like that never come, to anyone in Rancor, not in more than fifty years. The best anyone ever gets is a call saying we’ve taken care of it.”
I pulled back. “What about all those cell phone pictures, pictures of me, those punk purse-snatchers, their car. Your senior friend what’s-her-name took them.”
“Ursula.”
“Yeah, her. Why no action on it from your sheriff, or the State Police? And who’s ‘we’?”
“Ursula’s call went to our hotline.”
“Your hotline?”
“Yes. The Rancor Town Watch hotline. We’re the ‘we.’”
“Then what happens? Who do you call?”
“Each other.”
An unsettling image in my head. The news story from Scranton about the gang hit in a restaurant restroom. The bloody toilets. Crime scene chalk.
Bingo chips, as mentioned by the guy at the bowling alley bar, colloquial for shell casings.
My next thought I verbalized. “Saint Possenti’s in the middle of town: a Catholic bingo hall but no church. It’s what? A meeting place for an NRA coven?”
“Counsel, please. It’s a pistol range. It’s convenient for the seniors who live close by. The name’s an inside joke. It’s not a secret, it’s just not broadcast news.”
Bullets and bingo. In Rancor, as natural as strikes and spares.
Andy took my hand, gently guided it behind him, to his lower back, where I would place it to pull him closer to me for a full body hug. It was there for a different reason, for me to feel what was tucked into the back waist of his jeans, hidden under his loose bowling shirt: a gun in a holster.
“We’re armed, Counsel. All of us, soon as we’re old enough to carry. All the women are, too. Especially the women. We protect our families and our friends. We don’t arrest. We don’t go to court. We punish.”
An awkward moment as I looked at this sexy nurse who had suffered from an unfathomable violent act at a young age. Someone who had witnessed his father’s murder, and had been wounded by it in more ways than one. An entire small town wounded in the process. His eyes pleaded to me for understanding, but beneath their plea the message was clear: it would be my loss if I didn’t.
BOOM!
A gunshot from inside the rehabbed warehouse slapped us out of our interlude. I grabbed the shotgun, sprinted on wobbly legs toward the building entrance, called over my shoulder to Andy. “Floor? Unit?”
“Third floor. Unit three E. Counsel, wai
t…”
Fuck waiting. Fuck the elevator. I took the stairs, bounced against the stairwell walls on the way up, was doing better now, legs coming back, third floor, top, there, 3-E, unlocked door.
Fuzzy, my eyes blinking through it, but on alert. I stepped inside, raised the shotgun, grimaced as I balanced the short barrel on the cast on my broken forearm, praying I wouldn’t need to use my arm or the gun.
I looked, I listened.
Living area on left, open concept, no people, windows raised, fresh air rustling the curtains. On the right, a partition wall that stretched the length of the room almost to the windows, but didn’t reach up as far as the condo’s tall, warehouse ceiling boasting exposed ductwork and plumbing. From around the corner, scraping noises and low-key voices, running water, and I smelled an odd combination of antiseptic, bacon, and burnt toast. On silent feet I moved to the wall, paralleled it. My shotgun and I turned the corner.
A kitchen. A woman at a double sink, the spigot water running. More scraping; she was cleaning a griddle. At a large round table and a long center island, people sat in various stages of consuming breakfast, with raised forks or coffee cups in one hand, their other hands each with a gun, and all the guns were pointed at me. I had no choice but to lower my weapon. They lowered theirs. I got a few full-mouthed “G’morning, Counsel” sentiments before they returned their interest to their plates. Andy entered the kitchen behind me.
At the sink, a senior I didn’t recognize in a workout suit in rubber-ducky yellow scrubbed dishes. Seated at the center island were Al the Sheriff and Dody the retired police chief. At the table, some bowlers I remembered from last night, and the black woman I’d spoken to at the bar, plus Charlie dozing in her wheelchair.
“We thought we heard a gunshot,” Andy said, catching up to me from behind.
Floyd the bartender emerged from the hallway; the attention of the entire room went to him.
“Helen’s fine,” he announced. “The gunshot… She’s just working through some things. Whose turn is it to watch him?”
“Mine,” Dody said. She thanked her condo neighbor for making them breakfast. Dody entered the hallway. Andy had me follow Dody, who opened a bedroom door.
Inside, Linkletter was strapped tightly to a queen-size mattress and cuffed top and bottom to the bed. Two IVs and a plasma bag dripped fluids into his arms. He was diapered in bandages and gauze, adhesive tape encircling his midsection. He was sedated, but he was as wide awake as I’d ever seen a sedated person, his head up, his eyes bulging. The room, the mattress, everything stank of alcohol and spilled blood, dried and drying, its heaviest concentration in the center of the mattress, under his midsection. Standing at the foot of the bed was Helen, the blue-haired fry cook, her feet squared, her arms raised, both hands wrapped around a large handgun, the barrel steady, pointed at his head.
“That was a blank,” she shouted at him. “Next one, who knows.”
“Easy, Helen, easy,” Dody said. “They better all be blanks, young lady. We want him to be alive when we hand him over.”
“Stay out of this, Aunt Dody. This asshole—ruined—my fucking life!”
Another trigger squeeze. Boom!
Heavy-duty recoil pushed the gun up and back, but again, it was a blank. Helen rolled her head like she was limbering her neck muscles. She raised the gun into position again.
“Helen Stovall, you stop this right now,” Dody said, alongside her now. “That needs to be enough.”
Dody reached in, pried the weapon from her hands. Helen started a serious cry. Dody reached her arms around her, folding her into a comforting hug.
From the bed, a voice, soft, exhausted, lost: “Regina…” Linkletter murmured. “I saved you. The baby…”
“You put me on the needle!” Helen screamed. “You made me turn tricks for you. There’s no—fucking—baby! I terminated it! You fucking raped me, you fucking ugly—bunyip—bastard—”
“Helen,” Dody pleaded, “go get yourself some breakfast. Now, please. It’s my turn to watch him.”
Dody, to me now, Helen gone: “Meet Randall Burton, Counsel. Aka Howard Isaacs, aka Stephen Linkletter, aka many others, or so he’s boasted, along with boasting about having committed thirty-one murders. Adults and kids. He also says he’s terminal. And now, by whatever name you need him to be as your bounty, he’s yours.”
When we’d made our acquaintance earlier in the woods, he’d been in significantly better condition. Hanging on a closet door handle within view of the bed was a clear plastic ziplock bag containing what looked like butchered raw meat, with blood pooled at the bottom. I stopped myself before I asked what it was, because I knew.
“Oh. That,” Dody said, following my eyes. “Heh. The funniest thing. Helen didn’t think it was him when we let her see him, because his face looks different. Reconstructed. Then she saw what was in the bag. What an egomaniac. It’s got a tattoo on it.”
“Let me guess. A picture of a…”
“A hand puppet. The bunyip. Same art as he’s got on his arm.”
Already knew about the other one. But one thing I didn’t know: Helen had been another misguided runaway that this bastard had scarfed up. “So Helen… is Regina?”
“Regina Helen Stovall. My niece. She deep-sixed Regina, started using her middle name, got married, but it didn’t last. Losing ‘Regina’ as a name helped her deal with her past, her turning tricks, her drug habit. She’s been clean ever since. We’re so proud, and so protective, of her. The entire town is. Here, check this out.”
Dody lifted her bowling shirtsleeve, exposing her bicep. A bunyip tattoo.
“A lot of the women have one. So very, very protective, Counsel.”
They should have killed him. Handling a dead body would have been easier than handling a mutilated man in this condition, needing to be kept alive.
I was finally able to formulate a comment. “So this is the new Rancor law enforcement model? Vigilantism?”
“No,” Dody and Andy said in unison. “Fifty-plus years,” Andy added, “hardly qualifies it as new. Most of those years, we also had a full police force. Until folks decided why bother.”
I approached the bed nearly lost for words, taking in this nightmare visage that was my bounty. I managed a question for them, just to say something. “Tell me, how does the Maurice Fund fit in here?”
A moan from their prisoner. Dody produced her gun again and wandered the bed’s perimeter, keen to their patient.
Andy answered. “Mostly it’s like I said. For miners’ families who suffered losses over the years. Then again—”
Andy’s eyes shifted to Dody. My eyes followed. Dody accommodated us with a wave of her gun hand. She finished Andy’s sentence.
“It also keeps us armed. Bullets, guns. All legal. Trust me, Counsel, when I say we’d abandon our approach if all the guns on the streets could magically disappear, but politics will never let that happen.”
From the bed, a small, haggard plea. “Kill me,” their patient said, his speech slurred. “I told them—to kill me. Whoever’s here—kill me. Do it.”
“We’ve been over this,” Dody said to him, her voice firm. “It was gonna be either death or dismemberment. When we realized what you did to Rosie and Stella, you fucking monster, we overrode your decision. Good luck in prison, bitch.”
Someone needed to kill him. I wanted to stick my shotgun in his mouth and let it speak for all the people who never got a chance to speak for themselves, the kids especially. I leaned over the bed, settled instead on showing him my face. This got the reaction I was looking for.
“The Tourette’s woman,” he said, hoarsely. “The cave-in… the rats… you’re dead—”
“Yeah, well, fortunately for me, I’m not. Unfortunately for you, you’re not either.”
59
On the way back to the hospital in Carbondale, Andy was at the wheel of my van, me riding shotgun and earning the seat, my gun cradled in my arm. The barrel poked between the seats, aimed rearwa
rd. Pistol grip, short gunstock, pump action. It was manageable in my condition, good as long as I could handle the pain it would take to wield it. After my charge into the condo, my broken left arm hurt like a sonovabitch. I wanted my handguns back from the feds. And I desperately needed a soaking bath.
“There in ten minutes, twelve minutes tops. Better time,” Andy said, “once we get out of Rancor.”
In my head was the argument I’d lost to Andy: I don’t do bounty transport, my van’s not equipped for it, let the pros do it, etc. Andy’s position: my cradled shotgun. That, plus Randall Burton was weak and sedated, cuffed, in leg irons, and was attached to an animal crate where my savage German Shepherd growled at him from the inside, the crate open. “Waiting for that transport,” Andy said, “would only give him more time to die.”
Advantage, Andy.
Deliver the bounty, retrieve my handguns from the feds, get better meds for my throbbing arm. It would all get resolved in ten minutes, twelve minutes tops, then Vonetta could pay me my bounty money.
Deep breaths needed on my part. Breathe in, breathe out. Furry keychain. Better.
We passed a feed store, post office, diner, and barbershop, and coming up at the crest of the hill, Rancor Savings and Loan. Fungo’s growl was a low, threatening grumble that hadn’t stopped since we’d loaded Mr. Burton in here with us, onto the van floor. No stretcher, no gurney, no strapping onto a stiff board. He was wrapped tightly in gauze and bandages, his hands cuffed, his feet in leg irons. His severed genitals-in-a-bag were attached to Fungo’s crate, the crate bolted against the van wall. Prone, Burton’s head abutted the crate and his feet abutted the back of the driver’s seat. Iota Jean had pumped more sedatives into him at the condo, but he was slowly coming out of them, his arms and legs testing their confinement. He moaned.
“… where—the fuck—ammm I?”