Broken Monsters

by Lauren Beukes

  The faded peach building is a strip club. Or used to be. BARENAKED LADIES the sign reads, or would if some of the letters hadn’t fallen off. B RE AKED L DIES. Hell, if that ain’t a sign, then the sheriff’s notice on the door – ‘Foreclosed. Assets seizure’ – definitely is.

  The doors and windows have been boarded up, but sometimes they get lax round the back. Especially if they ain’t planning on returning. TK moseys round the side of the building. Sure enough, someone has already cracked the doorframe, still attached to the deadbolt, but no longer to the door. It’s not breaking and entering if there’s no breaking involved. TK opens the door onto darkness, which becomes absolute when it swings shut behind him.

  He goes back outside and scuffs around until he finds a piece of broken concrete to prop open the door and let in some light. He still has to feel his way round while his eyes adjust. Past the bathrooms, the smell of old piss. He steps confidently forward into the main bar and smashes his hip into the edge of a pool table.

  ‘Shit. Ow!’

  He pulls out his phone and uses it as a pathetic excuse for a flashlight. The place has already been gutted. Bottles smashed. Brass taps ripped right off the draft beer barrels. Probably zinc underneath. Place like this wouldn’t have expensive fittings. He picks up a broken pool cue from the table. He was never a boy scout, but it’s good to be prepared anyhow.

  He’s looking for the stairs to the dressing rooms. Back when he was a stupid yapping dog of a man right out of prison, he had a stripper girlfriend. Or he thought she was his girlfriend, but he was just another mope buying a little human attention. He knew the girls kept their stuff in the dressing room, and that the boss’s office was behind that. He’s willing to bet whoever broke in here didn’t make it that far.

  He climbs up onto the stage and can’t resist grabbing the pole and swinging his weight round it. ‘Baby, baby,’ he laughs at himself.

  There’s a metal tik-tak sound in the gloom behind him.

  TK turns quick, smashing the pool cue against the pole for effect. The clang reverberates through the empty club. ‘You get the hell out of here, or I will break you! You hear me?’

  He waits and listens. But there’s no follow-up. No curious critters this time. He steps behind the DJ booth and pushes the curtain aside to reveal a door. At first he thinks it’s locked, but he pushes hard against it and it gives way on to a narrow staircase that must have been hell to do in high heels.

  Upstairs is a narrow attic, untouched apart from the broken glass across the floor where some fool decided to throw rocks through the window. Sheriff missed these assets, which means it’s fair game, TK reckons. He has to stoop to go in under the rafters.

  The four narrow dressing-room cubicles are surrounded by lightbulbs. One of those see-through plastic high heels is lying forlorn on its side. Your prince ain’t never gonna find you now, he thinks. He runs his fingers through the tangle of red and platinum-blonde wigs on the counter, until he sees the speckle of rat droppings and snatches his hand away in a hurry.

  The door to the office is standing open, but so is the safe behind the desk. The boss obviously had time to clear out the cash, even if he didn’t take the booze. The disappointment tastes like stale tobacco in his mouth. Or it might be the smell up here. He won’t lie to himself – he was hoping for a tote bag full of Benjamins, like in the movies.

  But then he turns round and jackpot: a flat-screen TV mounted up in the corner. Perfect condition. Even has the remote in a plastic holder mounted on the wall next to a handwritten sign that says ‘Personnal who do not replace the TV remote will be fined’. He fires off a text.

  >TK: R. Barenaked Ladies, DelRay. Bring a screwdriver.

  They’ll need one to get the TV off the mounts without damaging it, and a trash bag to carry it in. Don’t want to get robbed, especially in this neighborhood.

  He goes through the drawers in the girls’ booths while he’s waiting for Ramón to call him back. He finds dried-out makeup, a hair pick, a sequined bikini top. He leaves that alone – he wouldn’t want some stranger pawing at his underwear. He also finds a photograph of a little boy squinting into the sun on a bicycle on the Riverwalk. Why did she leave it behind? It bothers him. He’s getting a little choked up about it, when he hears the same tik-tak sound from downstairs.

  ‘Ramón?’

  There’s no answer. He picks up the pool cue and makes his way carefully down the stairs.

  His friend is standing in the gloom, facing the wall, his palm up against it like he wants to push through, his other hand working his rosary beads. It sends a cold prickle all the way up TK’s spine into the base of his skull.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he calls out, louder than he intended, but hell if he isn’t freaking him out, standing there staring at the goddamn wall.

  ‘It’s a door,’ Ramón says, but his voice is high-pitched and distant. ‘I think I can open it.’ His hands work over the beads.

  ‘No. Don’t you do that,’ TK says, hurrying down the stairs. Maybe he trips as he climbs down off the stage. Only possible explanation. Because next thing he knows, one of those metal bar stools hurtles right into Ramón and knocks him down, breaking his contact with the door, which isn’t a door at all, just a chalk rectangle someone’s drawn on the wall.

  ‘What the fuck you do that for?’ Ramón says, climbing unsteadily to his knees, rubbing his hip where the stool struck him.

  ‘It was an accident. Knocked it as I came down.’ From halfway across the room. TK eyes the bar stool suspiciously as he pulls Ramón to his feet. ‘I was wrong about the TV. It’s got a big old crack.’

  ‘You got me down here for nothing?’ Ramón sulks.

  ‘Yeah, sorry. I’ll make it up to you. C’mon, let’s get out of here. It’s too sad, man. Too sad.’ He hustles him out into the bright sunlight, away from the drawing on the wall. But Ramón keeps looking back.

  Flavor of the Month

  Gabi is going over the photographs again when a cardboard folder slides slowly down over her screen, complete with sound-effect. ‘Sha-bloooooop,’ Mike Croff says, leaning over the edge of her cubicle, like the cat who got the canary and an airtight alibi.

  ‘Better be good, Mike,’ she says, taking the folder. It’s the one thing she misses from Beaubien – offices with doors.

  ‘Are you prepared to have your mind blown?’ Croff pops his fingers in a slow-mo simulation of an explosion.

  ‘Sure, blow me.’ She means it too, after what Luke told her.

  ‘That’s funny. You said “blow me”, and you don’t have a dick.’

  ‘Unless you have the other half of my kid, it’s going to have to be pretty damn spectacular.’ She pushes back on her chair. Her old chair had give, it would let you lean right back, this one is ergonomically designed with lower lumbar support that somewhat ruins any attempt at don’t-give-a-shit cool.

  ‘I got something beautiful from forensics.’ He takes Boyd’s chair from his desk and straddles it the wrong way round, setting his chin on the backrest and watching her.

  ‘About time,’ she says, tapping the folder, not opening it, not wanting to give him the satisfaction.

  ‘It’s not superglue and it’s not Dermabond, which plastic surgeons use to glue together skin edges, especially on kids who have face-planted into the edge of the table. It’s also not Fibrin, which you would use to seal blood vessels.’

  ‘Thank you for that.’ She opens the damn file already and skims it, trying to get ahead of him. Amino acid chains. R group bonding. Denatured. Enzymes.

  ‘What the fuck is “transglutaminase”?’

  ‘That’s where it gets really interesting. Ever hear of Wylie Dufresne or Heston Blumenthal?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Mike.’ Gabi sits upright in her chair – easier with lumbar support. ‘You got an ID?’

  ‘Don’t you wish. You want me to hand you your whole case wrapped up with a bow? No, they’re chefs who make seriously pretentious food. Molecular gastronomy.’
>
  ‘You are wasting my time.’

  ‘Ah, but it’s the trickle-down effect. Except, unlike the economy, it actually works. Cooking techniques make it down the food chain.’

  ‘Can we skip ahead to the good bit?’

  ‘Transglutaminase. Also known as meat glue. Fancy restaurants, the kind you and I can’t afford, my dear, use it to make concoctions like, I don’t know … bacon shrimp crème brûlée. The nasty steakhouse on the corner uses it to stick raw off-cuts together. Tell me if this sounds familiar: “It works by melting the proteins, bonding the muscle and fiber together seamlessly.”’

  ‘What’s the availability? Have you run down local transglutiminate suppliers?’

  ‘I can’t do all your work for you, Versado. And by the way, it’s transglutaminase. Call yourself a detective.’

  ‘I’ll call you something in a minute.’

  ‘Is that Spanish for thank you?’

  She gives him the finger.

  ‘Oh, that translates in any culture.’

  It turns out you can order meat glue the same way you can order dead rabbits for taxidermy – via the Internet.

  The rain clatters on the metal of the containers on the trucks packed in tight formation with the rat-a-tat of automatic gunfire, forming puddles under the tires, with rainbow slicks of oil. It drips down the back of Gabi’s neck, because the supervisor at Halston & Sons: Protein Specialists is not enthusiastic about the idea of letting them in, especially because they came through the yard, because sometimes you don’t want to go through the front door.

  ‘This again?’ J. Halston (according to his namebadge) is not happy to see them. One of the sons, or more likely a grandson. ‘All our workers are registered and union. And we had a health inspection last month. I got the certificate above the front desk in reception. If you’d come in that way, you’da seen it.’

  He has an accountant’s face and a boxer’s build, as if his job description includes being able to pound a side of beef into submission with his fists. His shaggy eyebrows under the hood of his raincoat have descended right down over his glasses, like storm clouds in corn country.

  ‘We’re not here about that,’ Boyd says, rubbing at the collar of his jacket where the cheap fabric is clinging to his neck. ‘You could be serving up rat meat and that’d be none of our business.’

  ‘What did you say to me?’ Young Halston is electrified with outrage. ‘We provide the meat for six out of ten of the best-rated burgers in the whole damn country. You check the reviews. Those are our white tablecloth customers in New York City and LA.’

  ‘I’m sure your meat is exactly what it says on the label,’ Gabi soothes.

  ‘Damn right it is.’ He shakes his head. ‘Rat.’

  ‘You’re on the list of customers in the Detroit area for Tengu suppliers, for a product called ActivTG.’

  ‘Yeah, so? Flavor of the month. That’s FDA-approved. A lot of the meat industry uses it.’

  ‘Traces of it were found on a murder victim, and we’re trying to trace where it might have come from.’

  ‘Is this about the little boy? Who was found with, what was it, animal remains?’ The storm cloud over his eyebrows lifts. Gabi can almost see his mind doing cognitive circus tricks. She heads him off before he grabs for the trapeze.

  ‘Our victim was found in a dumping-ground for all sorts of things. We’re following up all the leads right now.’

  ‘Oh man, that was awful. That little boy.’

  ‘You have kids?’ It’s a cheap shot, but it works. Experience brings people together. War. Terrorist attacks. Parenting.

  ‘Flew the coop already,’ he shrugs.

  ‘You got a photo?’ she says, pushing her luck.

  He takes out his phone and flicks through, realizes it’s getting wet and finally summons them into the loading dock, where they don’t need to shout over the drum of the rain, and – more importantly – it’s dry.

  The loading bay is stacked with refrigerated cases marked with the Halston logo, while workers in white overalls and hair nets and gloves bustle between them with packs of meat bound up in plastic wrap. It certainly looks FDA-approved, but it’s more than hygienic: it’s sterile, totally removed from the reality of the animals going in the other side.

  He shows her a photograph of a blunt-faced girl in a slinky prom dress. ‘That’s my oldest. She’s working the phone lines in our depot in Chicago. My boy’s just finished high school.’ He skips to a photograph of a young man posing with his arms folded across his chest, going for hardcore and failing.

  ‘Good-looking kids.’ Gabi is ready with her reciprocal offering. ‘That’s mine. She’s a handful. Wants to be a Broadway star.’

  ‘Grieg wants to be a nurse.’ He grimaces.

  ‘You bring them up to be independent-minded and look what happens,’ Gabi commiserates.

  ‘So, what kind of animal was it? The remains you found?’

  ‘We don’t have those lab results back yet,’ she bluffs. ‘We’re mostly interested in getting more information on this Activ stuff. You said you do use it here?’

  ‘We do what our clients want. Bespoke meats. Whatever cut or portion size you want. We do private labels too. We’ve had more call for specialist products recently.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Sausage without the casing. Things like that.’

  ‘Turducken?’ Boyd offers.

  ‘Not yet. You think that’s going to be a thing?’

  ‘In medieval times they used to stuff suckling pigs with birds.’ She only knows this because of Layla and her delight in choosing the most obscure history projects. Cat-worship in Egypt, medieval torture devices.

  ‘We don’t do that,’ although she can see he’s considering it. She guesses you have to stay on top of the trends. There’s only so much you can do with meat.

  ‘But you do all kinds of animals here?’

  ‘We slaughter our own sheep on site, but we get in other meat from around the country.’

  ‘Do you ever use bolt guns?’ Boyd asks, because forensic tests have been inconclusive so far and they can’t rule it out.

  J. Halston Jnr swats the question away. ‘No, we stun them and then slit their throats. Bolts are for cows.’

  ‘How about deer? Your website says you do venison too.’

  ‘Sure do. We get the meat in. Same as beef and chicken and pork, and we’ve done ostrich on special order a few times. Less cholesterol.’

  ‘But you don’t get the actual animals in?’

  ‘Not alive, no, ma’am,’ he says like he is explaining to a three-year-old. ‘We get the carcasses, already prepared, and then we cut them up.’

  ‘You know, I’ve never seen a real live meat-packing operation,’ Boyd says.

  ‘We’ve got a video on our website you can watch. State-of-the-art machinery to get the right cuts and analyze the meat for impurities.’

  ‘Would you mind if we had a look around?’

  ‘That would violate our health code.’ He widens his stance.

  ‘We could get a warrant. How long would that take us, Bob?’ Sometimes the word alone has enough weight to bludgeon through hesitancy.

  ‘Dunno.’ Boyd scratches at his belly. ‘Coupla hours? Real pain in the ass, though.’

  ‘Come on,’ Halston protests, ‘half the slaughterhouses in the state probably use Activ. Restaurants, too. Heck, you can buy it online. You gonna serve warrants on everyone?’

  Gabi pretends to soften. ‘Well maybe you could give us a list of your employees who have access to it?’

  ‘I can do that. But I can also tell you that it gets delivered to our front office in a box of sealed one-kilo foil baggies, straight from Tengu. Once that box is opened, it’s possible someone could have lifted one of the bags without us knowing about it.’

  ‘Kilos?’

  ‘It’s a Japanese company. They work in metric.’

  ‘So almost anyone could have had access to it.’

  ‘It’s not
hydrochloric acid. You don’t even need gloves to work with it. Totally safe, which means we don’t keep it under lock and key.’

  ‘Any incidents in the workplace? Disgruntled employees? Unusual behavior?’

  ‘Used to get guys in off the street to work a few shifts, but you know, we want to manage it better, work with the unions. Jobs are too precious.’

  ‘And they’ve had problems with immigration,’ Boyd whispers in her ear.

  ‘Can I speak to your personnel department?’

  ‘If you insist,’ he says, crabbily.

  They come away with a list of employees for the past five years, including temporary workers (but not the illegals, Boyd points out), and a bag of meat glue for testing.

  The Man Who Ate the World

  Patrick Thorpe stands on the doorstep and listens to the electronic chime going off somewhere deep inside the house. Three times the charm. No-one can say he didn’t try to get hold of Clayton. The man doesn’t answer the phone. He doesn’t have an email address. He doesn’t even come to the door.

  The curator starts walking back to his car, a little ashamed that he feels relieved, and then annoyed that he should feel bad when Clayton basically forced his way into the show, begging him on his knees in the middle of Honey Bee grocery store, his arms full of piñatas. He felt sorry for him – someone who’s been around the scene that long having to pack shelves at the Mexican supermarket. But pity isn’t a good enough reason to sacrifice the overall caliber of the show, and although Detroit has its share of outsider geniuses, he’s not sure Clayton Broom is one of them.