by Robert Ward
“Yeah,” Jack said. “If we just drink enough tequila we can pretend that we're still young.”
Flores laughed but shook his head.
“No, senor. There are new paths to take. I am thankful I live in the center of consciousness, senor. All the battles for cosmic consciousness in the sixties were forgotten in the commercial eighties and nineties. All except in Santa Fe and a few other enlightened places.”
“I see,” Jack said. “And do you think running a bordello takes cosmic consciousness?”
“Oh, yes, senor. This is all part of the new movement. Pleasure goes mainstream, the breaking down of the old Puritan ethic. Do you know the DVDs we make here have more effect on consciousness all over the world than a thousand plays by Shakespeare? And soon, senor, what is called porn now will be seen as the liberation it really is. That and new scientific breakthroughs will make a whole new world. Instead of hiding our sexuality in a basement we will put it front and center in the world, where it ought to be. God and religion will trade places with it. If you say you believe in God you will be laughed at. And rightfully so. Sex, youth, and vitality will replace the invisible despot in the sky. The judgmental tyrant who starts wars. The hippies were right when they said ‘Make love, not war,’ but they didn't take it far enough.”
“But you charge people for sex,” Jack said.
“Yes, because they are so unliberated they think only if they pay can it be worth anything. But in the coming Utopia, my friend, we shall all be young and we shall all be free of money. We shall be drenched in the earthy sperm of perfection, senor.”
Pancho Flores looked at him with a malevolent twinkle. Jack thought for a second about showing Flores a picture of Jennifer Wu, but then thought better of it. After all, if he had her out here, penned up somewhere, he wasn't going to admit it.
Then Flores patted him on the arm in a fatherly way and drifted off to talk to another patron.
A second later, the attractive young girl who had met him at the door found her way back to him.
“You met Pancho. I think he likes you very much. I am Maria. You want buy me a drink?”
“Sure,” Jack said. “What's your pleasure?”
“I like margarita. Strawberry,” she said laughing.
“Whiskey for me,” Jack said. “Jack Daniel's.”
“You want to drink in here, or go back to my room?” she asked. She batted her eyes in a silent-movie-actress kind of way. Jack laughed and she grabbed his hand again.
“I think maybe you want to go to the room first. We can order drinks and have them brought back there. You like that?”
“Sounds great,” Jack said.
Maria looked at the bartender and rapped twice on the bar. He nodded and she led Jack off down the hall.
The guitar player started singing “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.” That seemed odd to Jack. He had just been thinking about Freddy Fender, and now they were playing the very song that had been rolling through his mind. He had the strange sensation that whoever was running things around the Jackalope could read his thoughts. He knew it was an absurd idea, but this wasn't his usual low-grade paranoia. It was as though he had ingested some speed and could feel it tweaking his mind.
They knew what he was thinking. They knew he was going to come here, and they also knew he was with the FBI.
They knew all about him. They were playing with him. Like Lucky had played with him back at El Coyote.
He shook his head as though physically trying to shake out the spooks.
They don't know a damned thing, he silently reminded himself. They think you're just a friend of Michelle's. Relax.
As they headed out back, the porch door opened and Jack saw that his partner had added another woman. Now one was hanging from each arm. Oscar looked at Jack and cracked up.
“A man's gotta do his duty,” he said.
Maria took Jack to what looked like a motel room, just across from a broken fountain and a smaller service bar being tended by a spectacular-looking transvestite with a pink and gold D.A. haircut. They got their drinks from him/her, and Maria unlocked the door to her room. The bed was made, but just barely, and she left the lights out and lit an incense candle.
She smiled at him, sat down on the bed, and took off her top. The move was about as erotic as a child undressing a doll. Rather than being aroused, Jack felt protective of her. He hadn't really looked at her closely outside. But now she seemed about fifteen years old. Her breasts were small and there was a scar under one of them. Where a knife had sliced her, Jack thought.
“You pay me now?” she asked, timidly. “One hundred fifty dollars.”
“Sorry,” Jack said. “I only have a hundred.”
He took the bill out of his pocket and handed it to her.
“You a cop?”
“No way,” Jack said.
“You want something? Blow job?”
She reached for Jack's crotch and before he could do anything she had squeezed his soft penis.
“You not hard. You a fag?”
“No, what I am is a hermano.”
“A brother?”
“That's right,” Jack said. “A brother who is looking for his adopted sister.”
He sat down on the bed next to Maria and took out the picture of Jennifer and showed it to her.
“She disappeared two days ago. You seen her anywhere around here?”
She looked at the photo and shook her head.
“No, I don't think so.” But her whole manner had changed. She was frightened, her hands shaking.
“I think you're a cop. You going to take me to jail?”
Tears rolled down her face and she had begun to shiver. Jack took her hands softly in his.
“Now listen,” he said, “I'm not here to hurt you.”
She looked up at him with doubt in her eyes.
“Maybe you take me away. Maybe you feed me to the beast.”
“The beast,” Jack said. “What are you talking about?”
“You don't know? Really?”
“Really. Tell me, Maria.”
She bit her lower lip. Jack tenderly wiped the tears from her eyes.
“All the girls know. There is a man, wears black, he may not even be a man. May be the devil . . . He comes up to people on the street or even in their homes and he takes them to some place where he has . . .”
She could barely continue.
“Where he has a beast. A . . . how you say, a—”
“Monster?”
“Si. Monster. Terrible thing, weighs many pounds, and will chew up the girls. He gets strength from their hearts and brains. He is like a divinity. Can never die.”
“Where is this monster?”
“I don't know. Some people say he is at the Satan's place.”
“The Sons of Satan?”
“Si. A monster they feed girls who try to get away. In underground.”
She must be talking about Ole Big, the hog, Jack thought. But why would the Jesters have him eat people? Unless it was like a goodwill gesture between two nation-states. The Sons sold meth, the Jesters sold women. A little business between them made it possible for them to coexist; they might even do each other favors.
It sounded like something that sick creep Zollie would do.
But would Lucky be involved? It was possible. If a girl had seen too much in either camp she could put the whole operation at risk.
He thought of Jennifer, half-drugged, being fed to that horrible hog.
He looked at Maria again but she looked away and played nervously with her hair. He was struck by another possibility.
“Do you know of any girls who have disappeared?”
“No . . . I am not sure,” she said. “But maybe . . .”
“You know,” he said, “you're pretty good, kid. I gotta hand it to you. You send me away from here, back to the Sons of Satan.”
Her face hardened.
She'd run her young-and-helpless routine for him and he'd bought it wholesale. He'd gotten
sentimental over a young whore. He wasn't the first or the last guy to make that mistake. But it pissed him off anyway.
Jack grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back.
She emitted a little bark of pain.
“Now, you tell me. Have you seen this girl? And if so, where the fuck is she?”
She turned toward him, her face twisted into a snarl. The innocent kid who had been so abused by the world was gone, replaced by a braying hyena.
“If I scream the guards will come and beat your gringo ass to death.”
“If you scream I'll cut your fucking head off before they get here.”
Jack reached into his boot and took out his hunting knife. She looked down at it and began to tremble in fear.
“Okay,” she said, “I don't know for sure, but in the back beyond the houses there is a barn. And in there they have the Acts Speciales . . .”
“Like what?”
“Girls with animals. Horses, dogs . . . for people bored with regular sex. Sometimes they put girls in there for a while. Then the girls, they disappear. But you dint hear this from me.”
“Have you ever seen my sister back there? Answer me.”
“No, but that means nada, senor. They bring in new girls every day in a black van. None of us who works in the front ever sees them. They take them off the street and they bring them in a back entrance. And the girls are blindfolded. Then they take them to the cellar.”
“The cellar? In which building?”
“There is a white building behind the barn. They store stuff for the bar and restaurante there. The girls in Acts Speciales live beneath it. Outside, to the left.”
“Today? Did you see the van come up today?”
“Yes, I think it was the one. But I only see it drive in. I dint see your sister.”
“I want to see the place, right now. You're going to take me there.”
“No! They catch us, they kill us!”
“You don't take me I'm going to cut you up right here.”
She looked at him, and spat on the floor. But then she got up, put on her top, and led him to the door.
They walked around the fountain as they headed toward the end of the Jackalope's land. Jack looked around for Oscar but he was nowhere in sight. He tried his number on his cell phone but there was no reply.
What should he do? Find which room his partner was in, and maybe call attention to the fact that he was wandering around a part of the ranch that was off limits? Or just go in?
What the hell? If she was in there, he'd get her out and hook up with Oscar when he was done.
They walked into darkness for maybe fifty yards. Then Jack saw it, near the chain-link fence in the back, a low white building that looked like a bunker. It had blacked-out windows.
“The entrance is around the side, I think,” Maria said. “I never been in there.”
She stiffened as she spoke and Jack had to prod her with the knife to keep her going.
They came to the side of the building. There was no guard there but there was a metal door with a large padlock on it.
“Down there?” Jack asked.
“Si. They keep them here, sometimes for days, until they decide whether to use them in the show or get rid of them.”
“And if they don't want them, then what?”
“I don't know, senor. Maybe they send them to another bar in Arizona, maybe to Texas. Or maybe they feed them to . . . the beast.”
Her voice was high and she looked terrified.
Jack reached into his pocket and took out his handy little burglar's tools: a pen and a straight pin. He took the pen's shirt clip off and bent the end so that it was straight up. Then he put it in the bottom of the lock. After turning it twice he knew that he had to turn it right to open the lock. But first he had to work on the pins. There would be five or six of them in a lock this large. Keeping the pen clip taut against the bottom of the lock, he inserted the straight pin and slowly found the first tumbler, which he pushed straight up. He heard a small click inside and then proceeded to do the same thing to the other four pins.
Within seconds he had pushed all four pins up inside the lock. Then he turned the pen clip all the way to the right and the lock sprung open.
“Come on,” he said to Maria, “we're going in there together.”
“No way. You leave me out here.”
“So you can run and tell the Jackalope security boys? I don't think so.”
They walked in slowly and saw a storeroom floor covered with boxes of all kinds. To the left of the boxes was another door, this one also padlocked, leading to the basement.
He looked around the room and saw some rope and a pile of old rags. Within a few minutes he had Maria bound and gagged, and he left her tied to a radiator.
Then he started working on the lock to the cellar door. Seconds later the door opened and he slowly swung it open. He had his Glock in his hand.
On the left was a wall switch, but when Jack flicked it with his forefinger it failed to turn on the lights.
He reached back into his jacket pocket, pulled out a small pocket flashlight, and started down the steps, pistol in his right hand, flashlight in his left.
He lit up the steps in front of him and saw a filthy dirt floor and smelled the odor of rotting flesh.
When he got to the basement floor he looked around the room and saw rotting old magazines, piles of them sitting on a blond wood table. Over in the corner were an ancient television set and a flower vase with a couple of dead sunflowers drooping out of it.
Was this the living room for some poor girl who had been chosen to be the queen of the Acts Speciales? Jack felt such a deep hatred for the Jackalope and all the rot that it stood for that he half hoped someone would come out of the back, someone he could shoot full of holes.
But there was no one. Not yet, anyway.
He walked down the dark hallway. Slowly, carefully, he worked his way through three rooms, but all of them were empty. Finally there was one last door, and just before he opened it he thought he heard something. Crying? Yes, crying. A high-pitched voice crying . . . sobbing now, long, wrenching sobs. Was it Jennifer?
He readied his gun, opened the door, and then kicked it open, hard.
The dim light from the hallway barely lit up the room but there was enough to see a moldy old bed with something lying under a filthy sheet. Jack shone his flashlight on the sheet and saw that it was not really dirt he was looking at, but something greenish blue, something that shimmered, and then he saw what it was: a thousand filthy roaches that had been feasting on whatever the hell was under the sheet. The light made them scatter, and they scurried away from him in a mad race to the cracks in the walls.
What the hell was in the bed?
The stench was overwhelming . . . a rotting corpse? He moved toward it, barely able to breathe.
Then he became aware of a closet door opening on the other side of the room. He swung his light toward it, expecting someone to walk out, but there was no one there.
Jack turned his attention back to the foul-smelling bed. He reached down and slowly pulled back the filthy sheet.
What he saw was unbearable. It was a corpse all right, but not of a man. It was a hideous dead pig, its snout blown off by what looked like a shotgun blast. The roaches had gotten into its eyeballs and were streaming out of what was left of them. He looked closer and saw that the dead hog was covered with a kind of light green dust.
Jack gasped and stepped backward.
“Christ,” he said. “Jesus.”
But there was something else. He shone his flashlight on the animal's body and saw what seemed to be surgical cuts in its side and under its belly. He forced himself to look again and then held his breath as he stuck his hand into the wound. Bile came up in his throat as he felt around. There was blood and gore everywhere but he could tell that the intestines and liver were gone.
Someone had operated on the hog. He pulled his hand out, barely able to stand, and wiped
it off on the bedsheet. What the hell was going on? Was this some kind of really weird fetish at the Jackalope? Not only watch a whore screw a burro, but kill and operate on (and screw!) your own pig?
Big fun at the Jackalope tonight. Have hot sex . . . with . . . with Ole Big?
Jack now realized that this wasn't just any hog, but Ole Big himself. He recognized the cloudlike markings and the odd hump in the hog's back.
Who the hell did this? And why?
While Jack was pondering this, he heard something. Out in the hallway. The sound of footsteps.
He quickly ducked behind the open door, pressing his body flat against the wall.
Heavy, loud footsteps were coming toward the room.
The footsteps came close, closer . . . and then a man walked through the door. Jack leaped out from his hiding spot and pushed him hard in the back. There was a cry of terror as the big man fell onto the bed, on top of the body of the dead hog.
He turned and looked up at Jack, who shone his flashlight into his face. It was Zollie, lying there on Ole Big. His shirt was also covered with an odd green dust. Like fairy dust, Jack thought. Fairy dust on an idiot giant and his pet hog.
“I'll get you, you son of a bitch!” the big man yelled.
He made a mighty attempt to rise to his feet but Jack pushed him back down and took out his gun. He was about to arrest Zollie when he heard other men somewhere behind him.
Time to leave.
Jack ran out into the hall and headed up the steps the way he had come. Seconds later, he heard someone coming down the steps. He was too late, and there was no place to hide. He reached for his gun but his flashlight beam landed on Oscar.
“Jack! There you are! I bribed one of the bartenders to tell me where he thought Jennifer might be.”
“You lost your money, pal. She's not back there,” Jack said. “But you wouldn't believe what is.”
They heard what sounded like a large group of men running toward them, talking loudly in Spanish.
“Too many of them,” Jack said. “Time to retreat, Osc.”
They turned to head out the back way but Zollie came running out of the room, saw them, and started to lift his gun. Oscar ran into him, knocking him backward. The voices grew louder behind them and shots rang out.