Duet for the Devil
Page 43
It was Horrible’
(beneath the “13,” a cross drawn in human blood…)
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[ 258 ]
Interstate 24 deadends, forking into 57 North.
Frank’s sprinted about 180 of his 300-mile Nashville-to-St.-Louis stretch.
He stares down at the dash-clock through beyond-bloodshot eyes. The time reads “10:07.” Counting the pitstop for a fast wizz & that steaming cup of joe. That’s 70-&-countin’ any way you stack it. & the fuzz-buster hasn’t had to warn him once. Might say the freeway’s on low heat, & Smokie must be smokin’ somewhere else…
The highway dissolves in a wake of steelbelt hum.
He’s just approaching the 64 turnoff to Mt. Vernon to the east, about five miles south of the junction where 64 splits off again from its temporary merger into 57, his goal to roll west on toward St. Louis if Casey Jones don’t jump da rails from lack a’ shuteye, &, if he does, well, then, it’ll be “or de Promised Land…”
The car-fax starts beeping, signaling incoming, then it buzzes busily, & out slides a printed sheet. Frank reaches down, lifts it in his hand, & flicks on the domelight overhead. All it says is:
R.I.P.:
SHAW
CARVER
DOC
SIMMONS
ZENNO
WARREN FRANKLIN HAWKES
His name struck out by the cross-&-circle signature of Zodiac…
[ 259 ]
Frank feels as if a sledgehammer just hit him in the chest, then glanced off & struck his skull. His diaphragm contracts in a gut-knotting spasm. The air whooshes from his lungs. His heart freezes in mid-beat. His trachea constricting as if crushed by an iron glove. His entire cranium threatens to go critical, ready to explode, temples throbbing, the ridge of his brow seeming to swell outward, brain & flesh & bone warping, bulging outwards like some insane parody of John Merrick, The Elephant Man…
Shaw starts whispering again, snatches of acid lyric torn from ’60s rock, mad harmonica riffs whistling from between shattered teeth & gumless jaws, wailing on the night wind rushing through the opened T-roof. Dylan, again. From his favorite album, Highway 61 Revisited. Never a whole song, just jagged little frags like he always fucking did in Nam… Words “From a Buick 6”: “Wellllll, you know IIIIII need a STEAM SHOVEL mamaaahhh to KEEP AWAY the deadddddd. IIIIII need a DUMP TRUCK mamaaahhh to unnnnnloooooad my headddddd…”
Frank is no longer looking at the highway ahead, his stare locked to the sheet of paper fluttering in his right hand, fixed on the call-prefix of identifying numbers of the sending fax— “312 767—,” no need to run a trace, the sequence is a familiar one, denoting a Chi-Town area code & exchange…
Shaw throws back his head on cracked vertebrae & laughs, long & low & soulful… “Yeah. ‘& the ON-LY sound that’s LEFT, afterrrrrr the AM-BU-LANCES GOOOOOHHHHHH, izzzzzz CIN-DER-ELLA SWEE-PING UP on DES-O-LA-TIONNNNNN RRROOOOOOWWWWWW…”
Shaw’s fire-ravaged face leans in towards Frank’s, grinning that goddamned bare-boned, toothy, lip-torn grin of his, just chuckling away like he’s never heard anything so funny, then whispers that eerie refrain from Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man”: “Becauzzze someTHIN’s HAPpenin’, HERE, but you DON’T know WHAT it IZZZZZZ, doooooo youuuuuu, MIS-TER Jonezzzzzz…?”
Frank foregoes his plans to follow the I-64 fork to St. Louis, catch some hard-earned Delta dreamtime, then cruise on through tomorrow morning via I-70 to Lafayette County, MO. Shaw is drumming his bare finger bones on the padded dash, ten little drumsticks doing his damnedest jammin’ like a Buddy Rich improv. Hawkes’ right Tony Lama lizardskin stomps the pedal to the metal, & he burns rubber straight for the Windy City. The slipstream roused by the racing Vette wails through Shaw’s shattered teeth like dog-callin’ riffs of ghost harmonica, & he launches into a rap remix of vintage Highway 61:
“…Dr. Filth, he keeps his world. Inside of a leather cup. But all his sexless patients. They’re trying to blow it up…
“SHUT UP, SHAW, YOU’RE FUCKING DEAD!”
“…& the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls. “Get Outa Here If You Don’t Know…’”
“& THE DEAD CAN’T FUCKING TALK—”
“‘…Between the windows of the sea. Where lovely mermaids flow…’
“GO BACK TO DEVIL’S FUCKING VALLEY—”
“‘Casanova is just being punished for going. To Desolation Row…’
“& FUCKING LEAVE ME ALONE—”
“‘& picking up Angel who. Just arrived here from the coast. Who looked so fine at first. But left looking just like a ghost…’”
“I DON’T FUCKING BELIEVE IN ALL THIS GODDAMN VOODOO SHIT—” Hawkes screams. The wind blows through his dark, silver-streaked hair, stirring the strands into a wild swirl around his throbbing skull.
A huge moth splats loudly against the windshield.
Moonlight & the highbeams glisten on the highway ahead, his blurred vision transforming the asphalt into the dark River of Night’s Dreaming flowing away beneath the marauding mako silverbullet shark…
& moonlight glistens on tan leather on the empty curves of seat beside him…
[ 260 ]
Hawkes hits homebase about 2:30 in the morning. His Rolex’s face is nothing but a waterdroplet blur, but the FM’s so-sexysounding emcee-ette cues him to the time & temp.
He’s too shagged & fragged to do more than nose the Vette in an inch or two short of a one-on-one with the ground-level lot’s cement slab wall, tires straddling two parking spaces, grab his bags & the newly-acquired H&K G11, & stumble upstairs to hit the sack ’til sunup.
[ 261 ]
The Sandman cometh.
Down in the Loop, where State Street crosses Congress Parkway, the all-night grindhouses & porno joints are still sellin’ skin & sin & sleaze. Raincoats. Pale phantoms in slouched fedoras. Plain brown wrappers. & The Kinks wailin’ & flailin’ from some half-opened doorway, “All Day & All of the Night…”
Down on Wentworth, neon still splashes the rain-wet street with rippling wen-yen characters & dragons & pagodas in red & blue, though the restaurants have long since closed. A black Lotus cruises the block between Chiam & China, passing by a line of lesser-known competitors touting the regional cuisines of Szechwan & Hunan & Mandarin & Cantonese. The car glides to a stop along the curb. Two orange embers glow within the black, flaring with each drag, waning with each exhaled puff. Two teenage hoods in tailored grey silk suits & oilslick hair, just bidin’ time & blowin’ smoke. Scopin’ the street with matte-black wraparounds, & listenin’ to ’60s rock ’n’ roll…
Nearby, the sad & solitary call of a foghorn echoes in the mist along the Chicago S&S Canal…
A trio of Triad toughs in motorcycle leathers & savvy denims sidle out of an alley, swagger down the sidewalk, mosey up to the mobsters, lean into the Lotus, whip out a wad, & slide some cash across in trade for designer White from the labs of Hong Kong. The driver grins & nods. Revs the engine & rockets away from the curb. & the radio’s filling the S. 2300 stretch of Wentworth with Them, & “Here Comes the Night…”
A lone one-percenter rumbles down Lake St., ex-Straight Satan immigrated east from LaLa Land, now he flies the colors of the Tempus Fugits, an hourglass with wings, & the legends, “ThOu ShALT KiLL” & “RemeMBeR ChARLiE SUffEReD 4 UR SiNs.” He rolls along beside concrete columns of The EL, on past Clark St., Dearborn, & hangs a right on State past the front of NOLAN VOID’S. He nearly nails some skinny, keyed-looking geek who just bopped off the curb.
The little dude spills a sheaf of papers as he does a classic ass-backwards half-gainer of a pratfall, & comes up flailing, like an overgrown kid or a defrocked priest with coke-bottle specs dangling from one ear, a thin river of blood running down his balding scalp, trickling into his tonsure of blonde, back-swept hair.
“In Your Butt!” the geek squeaks as he flips the outlaw off. More bal
ls than brains…
A big, red-bearded bear of a Viking biker kicks open the door to Nolan’s, & Bob Seger throbs on the night wind, tellin’ ’bout those “Night Moves…”
A distant cockcrow echoes through the shadows of an ill-kept Iowa farmyard…
Radio rockin’ ’n’ reelin’ the Everly Bros. Phil & Don wailin’ “Wake Up Little Susie,” as daybreak’s rays lay a bright golden haze on Turtlewaxed injun-turquoise, twin shark fins & about half-a-ton of chrome… A very cherry ’57 Chevy, just leaving St. Louis, & makin’ the I-70 here-I-come run to Kansas City, before cruisin’ that Big K. Turnpike all the way to Wichita.
Just minor portions of a sprawling landscape, while the Head of Hawk lies lost in slumber…
Just a study in synchronism & synchronicity…
[ 262 ]
Frank’s plans for an early rising can be filed among those good intentions that the road to Hell is surely paved with.
It’s a little past 4:00 p.m. on Saturday afternoon when he finally drags his ass out of bed.
Almost exactly 12 hours of Z-time. & for Hawkes, Z-time is Z-time, filled with the symbols & taunting messages of Zodiac, mixed & remixed & endlessly looping, reality & nightmare & film & novels merging into a blue flickering cinema of the surreal…, & sometimes it’s himself, & sometimes he is Clint Eastwood as Callahan, trapped in never-ending reruns of a deviant version of Dirty Harry where a pre-Hellraiser Andy Robinson as Scorpio becomes the winner, & sometimes he is William Peter Blatty’s Lt. Kinderman straight out of The Exorcist’s Hell & stalking the Gemini Killer & stalked by the Gemini Killer in Legion, & then he segues into an escape that is no escape—back into time, back into Nam, back into Devil’s Fucking Valley, his body shredded by flying shrapnel, Death & Desolation his companions, & the flies always the multitude of buzzing, swarming, swirling flies, & sometimes he is Brother Frank exploring the limits of Pain & Pleasure, on His Final Day of Judgment (Frank Jr. had conned Dad into taking him to see the flick as a rare Father-Son outing during a too-brief too-seldom visit to D.C.—the day ended with a knock-down-drag-out of a fight with Judy Lynn for “poor judgment” in “condoning such violent & perverted trash…”), torn apart by Barkerian Cenobites while a hooded Zodiac stands among them, laughing & laughing like the roar of the waves…
It’s his swollen bladder that is the cause of his awakening. It feels like a basketball inflated to near bursting. All that caffeine acting as a diuretic. Inducing dreams of drowning in the ocean’s surging ebb-&-flow, dreams of heavy porcelain worship, being chained to the cool, enticing base of beckoning commode, unable to relieve the pain politely, afraid he’d drown face down if his own pipes burst, dreams of rivers tempting with the fluid babbling of Nature’s call, but every time he pops his weasel out another waterlogged corpse drifts by beneath the swinging penile pendulum, dreams of shadowed outhouses & the fear lurking in their depths that freezes his urethra in a frosty fist of iron…
After the proscribed regimen of shit/shower/shave, Frank dials his clandestine contact at Illinois Bell, a young lady whose assistance he has inveigled on numerous occasions, a serendipitous meet at a Sunday Jazz Brunch at The Empire Room of The Palmer House, & regularly paid off in swanky steaks at Eli’s.
[ 263 ]
Hot on the trail of his lead, Hawkes wheels the Vette at near-warpspeed through the weekend wahzoo-to-wahzoo crush of Chi-Town downtown rat race…
The EL rumbles by practically overhead, snaking the “S” curve rails at Wabash & Harrison. EL DIABLOS COPY MAGICK the sign above the narrow storefront reads. Frank pulls in to the curb. Locks up. Steps out. Boogies over to the business, & peers through the front window.
But the tenants have done a Doug Henning-worthy disappearing act, vanishing without the slightest trace.
A fivespot on formica works its own sleight of hand trick.
“Saw a panel truck out back, early this morning,” Ronnie Corleski, the barkeep at neighboring HARRY ZERO’S tells him.
“Any markings?” Frank asks.
“Plain blue van. Nothin’ fancy.”
“Any of ’em ever stop in here?”
“Yep.”
“Did they say anything about where they lived? where they were from?…you know, that kinda shit?”
“Fuckin’ gimme a break, Bucko, this here’z fuckin’ Chicago, nobody gives ya th’ fuckin’ time’a’day lest they’re goddamned gays ’r rapists…”
[ 264 ]
Back at his digs in the Dodge-Western Sector near the 41/Lincoln overpass, Frank bangs out his usual bullshit written update report for his mystery employers, eliding all but the less self-incriminating details of the Ocala/Miami investigations.
He types out the Houston dropbox address on the label of the manila envelope. Slips the report inside. Slaps on the “double-nickels” postage. & heads out the door for a round or so of cold ones…
[ 265 ]
The elevator lurches upward.
Frank struggles to keep his footing, knees threatening to buckle, his stability slammed by the sudden increase in g-force.
A double whammy. He is struck by an intense sensation of loneliness, a physical twisting in his gut. Goddamn, he misses the companionship of his pal, Elijah. Times like this, he’d be scratching the scruff of his neck, burying his fingertips in the warm fur…
His mind reels, slipping yet again into chance associations, remembering snatches from some small-talk conversation over supper several weeks before. Sally Allen, a valuable contact as a staff reporter for The Chicago Sun Times & a frequent dinner date, effusing about some brilliant young local writer fast acquiring a major rep on the international lit scene, apparently her latest cause celebré, waving her fork to accentuate each point, telling him about this 60-page epic poem the guy had written, something called “Desmond’s Inferno,” where each of the Windy City’s bars becomes another symbolic step along the Dantean Path…
Well, if that’s the case, he thinks, then I must’ve just been to Hell & back…
The lift whips to a quivering standstill. Again, torqueing Hawkes’ grip on the elusive reality beneath his feet, “…This sky, too, is folding under you, & it’s all over now, Baby Blue…” more lines from Dylan, Shaw’s voice whispering from somewhere deep inside his backbrain.
A pneumatic hiss, & the elevator doors slide open.
Frank staggers out, following the familiar, slightly threadbare red carpet down the hallway to his room. He knows each stain along the way by memory. & another couple of lines from the song flash through his mind, “…The carpet, too, is moving under you, & it’s all over now, Baby Blue…”
He fumbles with his keys. Finally negotiates an insertion in first the standard lock & then the double-deadbolt.
I could afford the Lake Shore or the Executive House or the Oxford House, with the bread I’m bringin’ in, between the monthly retainer & the short-term freelance PI gigs & the royalties on the books & the occasional article for one major magazine or another & those guest shots on national talk shows…
…But fuck those high-rollin’ stuffed shirts, I’m just a down home Kansas boy! He thinks as he swings open the apartment door.
Then it hits him, just as he swings the door inward on its hinges & strolls through the entryway.
The pleasant, homey scent of dog is fading fast.
That, & something that feels like a mule just kicked him dead square in the back of the skull…
[ 266 ]
Not a mule. Just your basic steel-toed work boot. Aimed with vicious efficiency by someone trained in Sabot or Korean Kickboxing or karate.
Even drunk, Hawkes rolls with the blow.
Reflex.
Basic, ingrained survival tactics.
A sudden massive riprush of epinephrine jolts his system, late-season Hurricane Frankie roarin’ in & blowin’ away the brewski fogbank that was clouding up his senses.
Hawkes has always prided himself on being one hardheaded sonuvabitch. Metaphorically & literally. This time it saves
him from a probable concussion.
He becomes one with the blow, syncing with its energy rather than opposing it. His own Ranger training in martial arts makes his move of going with the flow second nature. Paper wraps rock. Mystical, perhaps, but most effective.
His massive frame tucks & rolls, surprising in his agility for his size & weight, dodging another blow incoming from the front, somersaulting, crashing into his opponent’s shins, knocking his pins out from under him like a 190-pound bowling ball thundering down the lane, colliding with the heavy oak coffee table in a crash & blur of pinwheeling limbs, the bullet bruise on his chest from last Monday night’s bloodbath searing bone-deep pain from the fury of his exertions.
Frank lands on his feet, whirling to face the first assailant. An animated shadow hurtles toward him—ski mask, turtleneck, sweats, & cheap, loosely-fitting suitcoat all in cat burglar basic black.
Hawkes chuckles aloud, epinephrine-edged, whiteline-fever, Vette-jet-lagged-&-jagged, licking a trickle of blood from his split lip, eight miles high on the primal scream of pure brutal physicality pouring forth all his pentup ANGST… Rock crushes scissors…
His right bootheel lashes out, connects with a taut, muscular midsection, hears the wwwhhhoooooppp of out-rushed air, spins & kicks again, senses the jarring crunch of bone, the shattering of teeth.