by Adam Howe
With my free hand, I reached down the side of my seat, gripped the seat adjustor and cranked the handle, and then pushed my legs hard against the footwell. The seat shot backwards and crunched into the ninja’s shins. He howled in pain. The pressure of the cord around my throat relaxed momentarily. I sucked a desperate gulp of air. But my triumph was short-lived. It usually is.
The bungalow’s porch light blinked on. The front door clattered open and an elderly black woman charged from the house like a rheumatic rhino. She was wearing a floral nightdress, sleeping cap and slippers, and wielding a Dirty Harry hand cannon that was almost as big as her, cussing and calling me names she’d repent for in church, just as soon as she’d blown my head clean off. I guessed she couldn’t see the ninja behind me, dressed all in black as he was.
Mrs. Antwone fired a wild shot from the .44 that punched through the windshield and thudded into the passenger seat. A blizzard of seat stuffing stormed through the car. The recoil knocked the old girl out of her slippers. She clambered back to her feet and fired another shot that sheared away the driver’s-side wing mirror in a flash of sparks.
The ninja ducked down behind me and cried, “Shit!”
One of us had to, I was still being strangled.
This time, Mrs. Antwone planted her feet and took careful aim.
I was dead in her sights.
Her finger teased the trigger—
Using my free hand, I yanked the handbrake. The brakes unlocked with a squeal. The Eldorado gave a violent jerk and swooped away down the drive like a ship being launched. Mrs. Antwone’s shot ricocheted off the roof. The Caddy continued rolling in reverse down the drive, crashing through trashcans like it was bowling a strike, reaching warp speed as it rocketed across the street, and plowed into a Buick that was parked on the opposite curb. We jolted to a sudden stop that whiplashed my neck and hurled the ninja forwards from the backseat.
He butted the back of my headrest with nose-crunching force. The cord went slack around my throat. I clawed it away and heaved for breath. Then I turned towards him, balling the front of his shirt in one fist while I clobbered him unconscious with the other. I let him go and he slumped back on the seat.
In the orange glow of the streetlamps, and the houselights blinking on along the street, I could see that the ninja was in fact just a wiry little guy wearing a biker’s balaclava and all-black clothes. As I was about to remove his mask—
Headlights blinded me, and I glanced up and saw a speeding truck bearing down on me …
My truck.
There was Harry at the wheel, a look of grim determination on his face. Even over the rising roar of the engine, I could hear him yelling, “Hold on, Reggie! I’m coming!”
“Harry, no, wait—!”
The truck broadsided the Caddy and flipped it like a pancake. The ninja and me were tossed about the car like socks on a spin cycle. The Caddy came crashing down on its roof, skidding along the street, spitting sparks in its wake.
When we finally scraped to a seesawing stop, I could hear the ninja groaning somewhere in the upturned car behind me. I bellied through the broken driver’s-side window. Diamonds of Plexiglas studded my forearms as I slithered from the wreckage and collapsed on someone’s lawn. A plastic yard flamingo loomed above me like a fabulous pink carrion bird. I caught my breath, and then forced myself to sit, and then a shrill voice cried, “Dirty no-good car-stealin’ motherfucker!” And then the harmless old broad whacked me upside the head with the butt of her Magnum, and it was lights out.
* * *
When I regained consciousness, stretched across the lawn, Harry was kneeling beside me, squeezing my hand. The hand with the broken fingers. It hurt; it hurt a great deal. I tried to tell him this, but could only whimper. “Reggie?” he was saying. “You okay, Reggie? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me, buddy.” He gave my mitt another hard squeeze and I made a noise like bathwater gurgling down the plughole.
I heard the old woman’s voice. “Mr. Muffet?” She sounded surprised to see him, and embarrassed he was seeing her in her nightclothes. “Oh, my goodness. That reminds me. I plain forgot to make my car payments this month.”
“I’d be happy to hold your firearm while you write me a check, Mrs. Antwone.”
“Huh-Harry …” I croaked.
He gave my injured hand another long, hard squeeze.
“Right here, big guy. Save your strength. You can thank me later.”
“I quit.”
3.
* * *
The ninja’s name was Charles Eustace Cluley. He had murdered four women in the tri-state area over the past two years. His M.O. was always the same. After breaking into the victim’s car, Cluley would hide in the backseat, waiting patiently for the female owner to return—and then throttle them to death with a length of cord. Dorothea Antwone was fixing to be his fifth victim when I bumbled along and fritzed the deal. Her murder would have brought him over the top, made him a bona fide serial killer. And with that hope in mind, the press had already given him a name: The Backseat Strangler. Not the most remarkable moniker. But then, Charles Eustace Cluley, when he wasn’t killing women, was by and large an unremarkable man. The kind of fella neighbors described as a quiet man, who kept to himself, if they even noticed him at all …
Constable Randy-Ray Gooch said: “And none of this rings any bells with you?”
I just blinked at Gooch lazily, smiling a sloppy smile. I was doped with so many meds, I felt like I was floating above the hospital bed like the possessed girl in The Exorcist. My hand wore a cotton glove of bandages; my arm looked like a giant Q-tip. A painful knot pulsated on the back of my skull where Mrs. Antwone had brained me with her Magnum. My neck was cocooned in a brace.
I vaguely recalled seeing the Backseat Strangler mentioned in the Bugle as I’d flipped to the sports section and the funnies. And of course, I remembered Sherlock Wiley confidently predicting the offender would be Mexican; Walt was as good a psychological profiler as he was a stockbroker, because Charles Eustace Cluley was about as Mexican as I am.
I reassured Gooch I’d been listening.
“Buzz … seed … strong … laaaa …” I slurred, when attempts to communicate by telepathy failed. Then I started giggling like a Japanese schoolgirl.
Gooch shook his head. “What the hell kinda meds they got you on?”
I was still grinning at Gooch when we heard what sounded like an angry bear stomping down the hospital corridor towards my room.
“Levine!” the bear was roaring. “Reggie Levine!”
I stopped grinning. The angry bear was killing my high.
Gooch sighed. “In here, chief.”
Craw County Sheriff, Newman Jaynes, was a heavyset man with a steel-gray flattop, steelier grayer eyes, and a craggy Mount Rushmore mug. His hand rarely left the butt of his holstered sidearm; like one of the barflies leaning with his elbow on the slab at The Henhouse. We seldom saw Jaynes in Bigelow—except around election time—Gooch boasted this was due to his efficiency as town constable. In my dealings with Jaynes, in the aftermath of the skunk ape thing, I got the impression that he considered Bigelow and her people as his cross to bear, like he was the sheriff of the Twilight Zone. I guess I could see his point.
Jaynes stormed into the room. The angry look on his face, I wondered had he got the wrong room and somehow mistaken me for the Strangler? “Levine, you stupid sonofabitch!”
Nope, he had the right room. Well, shit. I hadn’t been expecting no medal, but a simple thank you for apprehending a vicious serial killer would’ve been nice.
Gooch said, “Take it easy now, chief—”
Jaynes glanced at Gooch and cried out in disgust and hurriedly averted his eyes.
“What the hell, Randy-Ray!”
Now I should probably mention that Gooch was not at the hospital solely in an official capacity. He was a patient himself, having suffered an allergic reaction to a batch of counterfeit laundry detergent. Martha Gooch had bought the bootleg T
ide from a bucket seller, and washed her husband’s jockey shorts in it. Gooch’s testicles had molted and then swollen to the size of grapefruits, necessitating the use of a truss I can only describe as a gauze mankini; he was wearing what looked like a cross between The Mummy and Sean Connery’s bandolier-diaper in Zardoz. Until Jaynes’s disgusted reaction, I hadn’t been sure I wasn’t hallucinating the whole thing.
“Damn it, man!” Jaynes said to Gooch. “Would you cover yourself?”
Gooch closed his hospital gown, tying the sash loosely around his waist.
“The doc told me I need to air myself regular,” he muttered sheepishly.
Looming over my bed, Jaynes glared down at me like I was something he’d scraped off the bottom of his shoe. “You gonna live?”
I mustered my most shit-eating grin. “You should see the other guy.”
Jaynes bristled with anger. “I have seen the other guy. What’s left of him. Thanks to the excessive force you and Muffet used when you made your little citizen’s arrest—and that’s putting it fucking mildly—the Strangler’s lawyer reckons he’s got a good shot at getting the charges dropped against his client. That kill-crazy maniac could be walking the streets again, instead of riding the lightning like he so richly deserves. I’ve half a mind to lock you and Muffet in a room with the victims’ families, let ‘em beat the living dogshit outta you clowns!”
Jaynes stabbed a finger in my face. “You just better hope and pray that Strangler sonofabitch doesn’t sue the county. And I don’t ever wanna hear your name in my office again, Levine. I mean, ever! I hear you’ve so much as farted in church, I’ll come down on you like you won’t believe. You’ll be sharing a cell with Steven Avery. Are we clear?”
He turned his finger towards Gooch.
“Keep this dumb bastard away from me, Gooch.”
And with that, Jaynes stormed from the room. When his footsteps faded away down the corridor, Gooch sighed. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I reckon you done good, son.” He gave my shoulder a comradely squeeze, and then he waddled from the room like a pregnant duck, and left me to take a nap.
4.
* * *
Mrs. Antwone woke me around noon with one of her “special lunches.” The old dear had returned to work at the hospital cafeteria directly after giving her statement to the law. “I never missed a day of work in my life, and I ain’t about to start now, Strangler be damned.” She told me she felt terrible about pistol-whipping me—which was probably not as terrible as I felt, being on the receiving end—and was eager to make it up to me. How she hoped to achieve that by poisoning me with her cooking, like a culinary Angel of Death, I didn’t know.
She placed the tray of food on the nightstand. I said, “Really Mrs. Antwone, you shouldn’t have.” And I meant it. She’d already treated me to what she called her “hero’s breakfast.” I’d thought that microwave burrito was bad, but at least I’d required a solid punch in the guts before I soiled myself.
“You got a visitor, Mr. Levine,” she said.
I sighed, hoping Sheriff Jaynes hadn’t returned to bawl me out again.
Then a familiar voice said: “How’s it hanging, champ?”
Harry stood in the doorway with a big bouquet of flowers.
Mrs. Antwone smiled at us both.
“My heroes … I’ll leave you boys some privacy.”
I almost begged her to stay.
Harry entered the room, clutching the bouquet before him like a shield.
“What are you doing here, Muffet?”
“Well, I pride myself on being a caring employer.”
He placed the flowers on my bed, like he was laying a wreath upon a grave.
“I told you, right after you damn near killed me: I quit.”
“You were serious about that? I figured you were in shock.”
“I was,” I said. “But I still meant it. Now get the hell out of here before I call security.” I was in no fit state to kick his ass, much as I dearly wanted to. I picked up the flowers and thrust them at him. “And take your damn flowers with you.” I glanced at the card on the bouquet. “And who the hell is Mrs. Yakamoto?”
“Room 237,” Harry said. “I figured you’d get more use out of them.” He crossed himself.
The last thing I needed was a clan of angry Yakuza hunting for whoever stole their mama-san’s flowers. I shook my head at him. “You really are some piece of—”
“Work?”
“No.”
“Alright, I can tell you’re a little sore.”
“I’m a lot sore, not to mention I hurt like holy fucking hell.”
“So I’ll come back when you’re a little less cranky.”
I hurled a bedpan at his head and he ducked and it clanged off the wall as he scuttled out the door.
But if I thought that was the last I’d ever see of Harry Muffet, that from herein my life would be jake, then I was sorely, believe me, sorely mistaken.
THREE
GOATSUCKER
1.
* * *
A week or two later and mostly healed, I was back at work at The Henhouse.
“Where you belong,” Walt had said, in a welcome-back speech that chilled me to the core. Christ, there had to be more than this … Didn’t there?
I was playing the Smokey and the Bandit pinball machine, on my last ball. Despite my poorly paw—my pinkie and ring fingers were splinted and taped together, my hand wore a glove of bruises—I was really racking up the points and feeling confident I could reclaim my high score from my rival pinball wizard.
That’s when the phone in the phone kiosk started ringing.
“Phone,” Walt said to me. He might’ve snapped his fingers too, but he was otherwise engaged, experimenting with the recipe for a twenty-dollar cocktail he called the Skunk Ape; so far all he’d got right was the smell.
“Can’t you get it?” I whined, struggling to concentrate on my game.
“Why don’t you ask your friend Harry to get it?” Walt said.
I’d heard a lot of that shit since I came back to work. Why don’t you ask your friend Harry to do this, why don’t you ask your friend Harry to do that; why don’t you ask your friend Harry to pay your paycheck this week? I guess I should’ve been flattered Walt was jealous.
The phone continued ringing. Finally old Lou gave a burdened sigh, dragged himself from his spot at the end of the stage, and crossed the room to answer the phone. Lou wasn’t being helpful so much as the noise was distracting him from Marlene’s performance. “Henhouse, Louis speaking.” Lou listened to the caller and then suddenly gasped. He muffled the mouthpiece. “Reggie, it’s for you.” Lou’s eyes were shining with the kind of excitement he usually reserved for when Marlene shucked her drawers.
“Take a message.”
“But—but Reggie … it’s Nicolas Cage.”
I said, “Huh?” Taking my eyes off the playfield and losing my last pinball.
“Damn it!” I said, and smacked the machine. The automated voice of Jackie Gleason mocked me from the machine: “Nobody, and I mean nobody makes Sheriff Buford T. Justice look like a possum’s pecker!”
Walt looked a little disappointed he hadn’t answered the phone himself. He could’ve chewed the fat with his buddy ‘Nick.’ “Maybe he wants to make another movie about this Backseat Strangler thing?”
Great. First the skunk ape thing, now the Backseat Strangler thing.
I went and took the phone from Lou, shooing him away when he tried to eavesdrop. I brushed down my shirt, ran a hand through my hair—I don’t know why, it wasn’t like Cage could see me—cleared my throat and said, “Mr. Cage, it’s an honor to finally—”
Harry cut in and said, “I apologize for the subterfuge, Reggie. But you wouldn’t return my calls, and I took Mr. Wiley at his word that he’d shoot me if I showed my face at The Henhouse.”
“Harry?” I cut a sorry glance at the pinball machine. “You sonofabitch!”
“Don’t hang up, Re
ggie. Please!”
To this day, I don’t know why I didn’t hang up the phone then and there. Maybe it was the desperation in his voice, and the part of me that liked hearing it.
“I need your help,” he said.
“You need help alright.”
“I’m in trouble here, Reggie. Big trouble.”
“And I should give a shit why exactly?”
“I thought we were friends?”
I hacked a bitter laugh. “What the hell gave you that idea?”
He quickly changed tack; he had a way of doing that, a way I can only describe as Muffetish. “Well, you ungrateful bastard. Now I’m not the kinda guy who calls in favors … But—well—you owe me.”
“How do you figure that?”
“It wasn’t for me, that Strangler sonofabitch might’ve strangled you.”
“I’d already kayoed him when you rammed me with my truck! Besides, it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have been there to be strangled to start with.”
“Oh, now you’re just splitting hairs.”
“Not to mention I’d still have my truck.”
“Is that what this is about?”
“This, what? You called me!”
“You want a truck? Come to the lot, you can pick out any damn truck you like!”
He’d baited the hook; I couldn’t resist. “Any truck?”
“Any truck. In fact, I’ve got just the truck for you.”
“You just said I could pick.”
“Yeah, but, Reggie—once you see this truck, you won’t want any other one.”
I gave a long sigh. “Exactly what kinda trouble are you in, Muffet?”
“The deep shit kind.”
I gave a knowing grunt.
“Come to the lot, I’ll tell you everything.”
“And you’ll give me a truck—” I reminded him, but he’d already hung up.
I put the phone down, and returned to the pinball machine.
“Well?” Walt said. “What’d he say?”