by Boston Teran
“You can do all the shape-shifting you want for that crew of yours, okay. I don’t give a rat’s ass. I don’t do charity work. I don’t give to any church. And I can’t be left sitting around waiting …”
Cyrus leans forward for a little playful confrontation. “You want to know why I was late? We were doin’ rat patrol. We had this little pretty-pretty with us. You know I like the taste before they even have hair on them.”
“I don’t want to hear this,” says Errol.
“We were having her good when this spic came along. After I went through his wallet I saw he was some kind of mineral prospector and—”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“Don’t want to hear what? We have to keep our claws sharp, don’t we? So I test myself. Unfortunately, I end up testing myself against amateurs.”
Errol has had enough and gets up. He takes a map from his pocket and tosses it on the table. “Take a look. See if you have any questions.”
There is no shortage of disgust in Cyrus’s face as he watches Errol cross the huge room. The space is more fitting to a barn than a bar.
Errol orders another gin. The whiskey is lined up on wooden shelves. The bartender is Latin, from the far south. On the back of his hand is tattooed a pentagram. He looks at Cyrus to see if he, too, wants another drink. Cyrus nods. A couple of speakers are blaring out some homeboy Spanish version of “The Weight.” Errol makes his way back through dozens of card tables and Salvation Army reject furniture, where factory dogs play cards and talk away their lives over beer.
Errol sits, passes Cyrus his drink. “You and I have a good business. I don’t want to get into any Hunter Thompson bullshit with you. Okay?”
Cyrus is thinking that Gutter and Wood ought to be rolling in with Headcase pretty soon. Then he’ll put this yuppie swine through some real weed-crawling.
“We all keep our claws sharp,” counters Cyrus. “So don’t tell me you’re not fuckin’ with me, alright?”
“How am I fuckin’ with you?”
“The dead one.”
Errol gets a little nervous, as he doesn’t understand. “You’re talkin’ cryptic.”
“Headcase,” says Cyrus. “Maybe you’re fuckin’ with me just a little for being a few days late by telling her you’d hook us up, huh?” Cyrus’s movements are controlled and precise as he drinks his tequila, but there is fury around the bloody thunderbolts under his eyes.
“I thought maybe you’d want to bleed her a …” Errol stops. Sees this whole thing is a fuckup. That no matter what he says, it won’t go. He has touched off something and in doing so crossed over into the demon’s country. He tries to get the moment back by sliding the map across to Cyrus. “The pickup will be west of Algodones. Tomorrow night. Two mules …”
Cyrus has yet to take his eyes from Errol, and in his red shirt with cutoff sleeves and black jeans he is like some blood-stiffened hide.
Errol takes a long drink of gin. “We’re gonna get into it, and over what? That cunt. It was just …”
Cyrus folds his hands and stares thoughtfully at the face across from him.
“Are we in business or are we out?” says Errol.
“You’re a phony fuckin’ mock …” The architecture of Cyrus’s face takes on a churchman’s solace. “I know who you are,” he says.
Errol adjusts himself in his seat, anticipating the bizarreness to come. He’s seen this drill before with others. Sometimes it’s just malicious indulgence, but other times …
“Maybe you’re right, Cyrus. I’m sure I’m as phony as the next. But all I can tell you, if it wasn’t for the me’s of the world, there’d be no you.” Errol gets up, but Cyrus grabs him by the arm and forces him to hold his place.
“You got it the wrong way round. I created the likes of you. For my own pleasure. And when I’ve had enough, when I’ve watched you defile yourself enough, I will have you in my belly. And you are dangerously close now to turning this quiet spot into the sight of a nightmare.”
Errol stands there, just haunch and flesh and now fear, but he tries to will himself through it.
Cyrus spots the beat-up white Cherokee they’ve picked up lumping over the rain-swelled potholes of the lot. He can see Case wedged in between Gutter and Wood as the Cherokee pulls around. Cyrus looks back at Errol, smiles. He lets him go. He stands. Sees Errol ease up a bit but knows he still isn’t sure.
“I’ll bet,” Cyrus says, “that for one second, even a swine flu like you was praying to that fag from Jerusalem.”
35
Gutter leans over so his head is right next to Case’s. “You can feel him, can’t you? The Wicked King is knockin’ on coffins.”
He says it to cut deep. She can see Cyrus staring out the window. Framed by the bar’s overhead fluorescent light, his skin looks more yellow than she remembers. She eyes Gutter watching her and Wood beside her tapping out a beat on the steering wheel. The cold silence of street wolves on the watch. Catch dogs waiting for the whip or the finger roll to call them to the kill. Suddenly time has brought her back.
Cyrus motions Wood to drive around behind the bar. Case still has the gun, and she keeps Bob’s canvas coat close around it. Wood spins the Cherokee through the lot until he comes up along the passenger side of the van and slows.
Case spots Lena in the driver’s seat talking with Granny Boy, who is leaning against the driver’s door. For a moment her and Lena’s eyes lock. Lena slides around in the seat. Her hand, with a cigarette in it, tries to wave, but it is a poor, melancholy excuse of a move.
Case nods back.
Granny Boy comes over and leans in the window. He’s got on a perfectly grooved speed-freak grin. “Come back to the goats, huh, lost sister?”
“I’m ready for the velvet collar, Granny Boy.”
Before he can get it on, Gutter shoves Granny Boy’s face back. “Come on, Cyrus wants us to pull around the bar.”
Case notes the disquieting way Granny Boy quickly stops looking at her. The Cherokee swings around, rising and falling through potholes. The trim of the headlights makes a sweep that catches Granny Boy climbing through a cloth drape that hangs across the inside of the van.
Case picks out a pair of whitish legs lying on the green carpet spread across the van floor. Knees facing down, close together. She can’t stretch her look too hard with Wood kicking out and the van backing up, its headlights going on right in her eyes.
That trigger of desperate survival that junkies have is struck. If Gabi was alive they’d have to keep her somewhere. But talk about fuckin’ mayhem, keeping her in the back of a van as you trip the border.
Of course, it could be some doper chick they picked up on the road who’s stoned out. But it could be Gabi, the legs looked young enough, still with the baby fat on them. They were close enough to be tied. Fuck … Her head wheels are starting to cook, even fry some.
Case does the junkie nose-play shit: sniffing, wiping. She starts with the edgy body ticks. She motions with her head toward the van, tries to bait them out. “I see Granny Boy has got himself a little sex kitten.”
A denuded stare between Gutter and Wood. Punk rhetoric in posturing.
“From birthmarks to teeth marks to needle marks,” says Wood as he winks at Gutter.
“I can smell that Tijuana perfume from here,” says Gutter, sitting back now and watching Case even more closely.
Tijuana perfume. Their old crack about teenage pussy. Unless they scragged some other piece, it had to be her. Had to be …
Errol trails behind Cyrus as he cruises past the bartender. The bartender is a taller man with white hair who carries himself like a judge, or a felon held in high regard. He and Cyrus exchange a few words in Spanish, and the bartender reaches toward a key rack on the back wall. He tosses Cyrus a motel key. Cyrus leans over the bar and the men share private whisperings. The bartender nods diplomatically, then they both make fists and the backs of their hands meet, pentagram to pentagram.
Cyrus turns to E
rrol. “Party time.”
The Cherokee pulls around the bar into a large open field of weeds, mud, and rusty artless shapes of metal. Electric lights are strung along cables from the back door of the bar to a chorus of Port-O-Sans broken into two groups, each with its own hand-painted sign—one of a naked man, the other of a naked woman. One last bullet-riddled Port-O-San sits off by itself at the edge of an incline, with its own hand-painted sign, of a man taking it up the ass.
The Cherokee pulls up and the van squares alongside it. Case does a read of the situation. She could probably do Gutter and Wood before they even caught on. Probably. Probably get to the van. Maybe it wouldn’t be easy to kill Lena dead on. Maybe not even possible. And what about Granny Boy? It’s the longest twenty feet in the world if you fuck up.
“I know why you’re here,” Bob whispered. “I know. And you lied to me in the worst way.”
She stood there waiting, facing off with him in the magnificence all bad temper affords.
“I’m looking at you,” he said. “Through the cheap banality of your lies.” He roughed her shirt up. “ ‘I’ll help get her back. Otherwise, if we get close enough, maybe Cyrus will kill her quick.’ Right? Isn’t that what you told …”
She has just a few seconds of luxury to look into the heart of her own debate. Cyrus steps out into the night. He stops just a few feet past the door from which strings of lightbulbs emanate out to the Port-O-Sans.
She is shoved out of the Cherokee. Other car doors open. Slam shut. A few words are spoken. But she is focused on one thing: Cyrus. He walks toward her through the mud.
She could kill him, at least. She could do that no matter what. Blow his whole cosmic empire to ass-dust with as many shots as she can get off.
But she doesn’t. She is not sure if she is suddenly afraid for her own life or if he has some power over her. And what about the child? What would happen to her in the minutes after the fall?
As Cyrus comes up to her he puts his arms out in the way of all kindness. “As Son of Sam wrote so correctly,
‘Hello from the gutters of the west
Which are filled with dog manure
Vomit, stale wine, urine, and blood.
Hello from the sewers of our mind
Which swallow up delicacies.’ ”
When he is just a few feet away she becomes deathly afraid for her own life, but she fights herself past it. Just a few good hours, minutes, and she might get close enough to the girl. She puts her hands out. “Can I come home … please? Can I co—”
He hits her square in the face. Blood shoots out the piping of both nostrils. She falls backward into the mud and lands square on her ass. She totters toward unconsciousness. Lena starts toward her crying, but Cyrus orders her back.
A few of the factory boys are talking by the jakes. They look at the bloody thing sitting there. Cyrus squats down beside Case. He can hear the factory boys talking up their manhood. He stares back at them and offers a few choice threats in Spanish, and Gutter puts an exclamation point to the whole business with a shotgun tapping the window frame of the open Cherokee door. They move off into the darkness silently.
Cyrus turns to Errol. He holds up the motel key and waves it. “You wanted a little blood.”
36
“I saw Maureen the other night,” Arthur says.
“I know,” John Lee says.
“You do. She told you?”
“No, Arthur, her mouth stays closed only for me. But the moment you picked this shanty of a bar I knew something was wrong. I was hoping maybe you’d knocked somebody up, something interesting like that, but …”
The Bugle is a pit stop out on Sierra Highway. A place that’s earned its reputation for afternoon drunks and for the recorded jazz version of taps they play at last call. The place is run by a proprietress with huge sagging breasts, index-finger-long painted-on eyebrows, and a pirate bandanna turbaned around her head to cover up a bald spot. The place even has a cooler of sorts for milk, butter, cheese, and cold cuts, which works as a cover to the state so drunks who live on food stamps have a watering hole where they can waste their lives away.
“You got to lay off Maureen, friend. I mean it.”
John Lee’s eyes narrow. “Do you really think there is such a thing as friendship? I don’t mean like when you’re kids. When you’re kids you’re just moments and friendship is those moments. But when the horse is out of the gate and you’re racing through the adulthood of your life—the hard years, Arthur—do you think there’s such a thing as friendship? Or are all friendships just excuses to get things you want? Need. Get things accomplished. Close deals.”
Arthur looks out across the bar from the dark back table by the washroom where they sit. “I don’t like where this is going.”
“You don’t like where we’ve been, do you, friend?”
“I don’t.”
John Lee leans forward. “Our friendship is the past. Lest we forget.” He smiles. “But we have our good days, don’t we? As for the old lady …”
“I know she had an affair with Sam.”
This gives John Lee pause. “How do you know this?”
“Sarah told me.”
“Sarah … not Maureen?”
“Sarah.”
“You’re lying.”
“She told me a week before the murders.”
“And you said nothing to me?”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“But you’re willing to hurt me now.”
“I do not want you hurting your wife.”
“What makes you think that’s what we fought about, if she didn’t tell you?”
“You will not hit her again.”
“Or? Will you put me up for public scandal? Am I to be thrown out of the temple with the money changers? The cunt went right to you—”
“Do you want Gabi found?”
John Lee can hear himself shifting against the leather booth.
Arthur continues. “Your wife was having an affair with one of the victims of a homicide. It might seem to some that you wouldn’t be in a position to devote yourself cleanly to solving that crime. Some might wonder, if those facts become part of the public record. I would be forced to wonder myself.”
“So we’re not talking about Maureen anymore, are we?”
“I am talking about you.”
“You don’t give a shit about Maureen. This is just a come-on to keep faith with your business partner and social standings.”
“Find Gabi. I mean it. Find her.”
“What the fuck do you think I’m doing?”
“I think you’re beating your wife and watching your videos and—”
“Have you heard from Bob and his junkie queen? How they doin’ out there on the road? What would some think of that? Why didn’t you stop them? Huh? And how much did you subsidize them? Huh? You mind your fuckin’ business now …”
Arthur sits back. He rubs his palms against the wooden tabletop. He sits there like a great boar caught in the brush and unable to decide whether to charge or back off.
John Lee looks into the stark pattern of half-light the bar affords, where wayfarers drink and ramble through the small talk of their lives. How many, he wonders, carry the secret of murder within them?
“Maybe you and I overreached ourselves, Arthur. Maybe there’s no difference between us and that collection over there except for one clean shot.”
He presses his jaw in the direction of the bar, where the proprietress is belly-laughing at some private joke with a collection of garrulous barstoolers.
Arthur does a slow turn through John Lee’s cryptic comments: We have the good ole days … Maybe we overreached ourselves back then … The difference between us and them is one shot … Arthur eyes his “old friend.” “Are you fuckin’ with me? Threatening me? Warning me?”
John Lee stands quietly.
“Did you go after Sam? Did you hire someone to go after him? Do you know what happened at the house?”
> John Lee does not ignore the questions, he just lets them dangle there in space. He drops down cash for the bill. As he goes to leave, Arthur heavily grabs him by the hand.
“Sarah’s death,” he whispers, frightened, “Gabi … It wouldn’t have anything to do with—”
“Don’t go there,” John Lee warns, “unless you are prepared for the fuckin’ outcome.”
37
A small tracer is wedged up into the dashboard of the Dakota, knocking out its yellow heartbeat signal on a marked grid. The signal has been holding steady for the last ten minutes, making it at least humanly possible for Bob to track Case. Bob drives south on Benito Juarez to where Mexicali breaks away into a gallery of arroyos and stream-beds.
He’d sewn a bug into the canvas coat he’d thrown to Case. He had hidden the coat behind the Dakota’s front seat on the chance Case fucked him over and split with the truck somewhere on the road. Now it’s his only lifeline to her.
The miles go by in slow black. He’s alone there on the road but for a few rigs blistering past him up toward the border.Moving south through that trace of scraped-out turf, Bob passes great scaffolds of metal abandoned along the roadside. They loom large as girdered dinosaurs against a moon come back from the clouds, thanks to a gulf wind. Most of it is toxic waste; drums and columns, laths and welding joints.
Now and then Bob can see pathetics loading trucks and makeshift pickups with scrap to sell in the colonias. The wound across his chest rages and he rages back, feeling he is part of that ferric landscape. A part of its dire reckonings.
Cyrus has Gutter and Wood drag Case through the reeking mud and into the Cherokee. Errol tries to back off from the whole business, but Cyrus edges him toward the van with a look that is childlike and bemused and wholly without sincerity.
From the back door the bartender watches the two vehicles cross that sumpy prado toward a fake adobe horseshoe-shaped motel on the far road. He smokes a gnarled cigarillo and regrets missing the skelterish pricking that may go down in that room while he serves headless mules.