Plainclothes Naked

by Jerry Stahl

  Tina stopped on the sidewalk, senses on alert. She reached in her purse and touched the straight razor. She couldn’t see him, but she knew. Any second. Stiff-legged, she remained still, torn between running back to the car or into the building to warn Manny. She needed another cigarette. Fumbled in her purse for pack and lighter.

  And then—“Miss me, Tina?”

  The voice like curdled syrup.

  Tina cracked off the filter, finished lighting her Viceroy, and exhaled with exaggerated leisure. She turned slowly. He wasn’t there. She turned again. Nobody. Then, from behind the Dumpster fronting the rutted alley that ran beside the building, a figure stepped toward her. Draped in a Pawnee Lodge bedspread, Tony’s face was shadowed, his coke-psychosis eyes blasting affable madness.

  “Ready to party?”

  Tina spotted the muzzle at the same time she noticed his bare knees. When Tony raised the .357, the bedspread parted, revealing his bloody thighs and sex. It was hard not to gag. But her fear was not about his lack of pants. It was about the gun. The blue-steel twin of the Magnum Manny’d snagged in her bathroom.

  Zank waggled the Python’s fat barrel toward the entrance and Tina marched in front of him, her hand working around the blade in her purse.

  Mistaking the gesture, Tony came alive. “Don’t pull out the picture here,” he said, nudging her with the weapon. “Wait’ll we get upstairs.”

  Then he pressed his cracked lips to her ear. Conspiratorial. That same insecticide breath.

  “They got midgets under the sidewalk,” he whispered, “with the infrared. Same guys who used to flush Cong out of their tunnels, in Nam. Now they’re FBI. They got that infrared, so they can see up. Through lead, if they want to. They’re watching us now but it’s okay. I’m demagnetized. Did it myself. Go ahead, just open the door. Walk in normal.”

  In the vestibule, where tenants would buzz people in if people ever came, if there were any tenants besides Tony Zank, Tina poised to make her move. She had her fingers around the straight razor, when he surprised her.

  “I felt it right away,” he announced giddily. “Didn’t you?”

  “Didn’t I what?”

  She turned, morbidly curious, keeping her grip on the blade and trying to aim her eyes somewhere besides Zank’s car accident of a face. She didn’t want to look down, either—he still hadn’t washed, and the dried blood made his penis look like a rusty doorbell. This left her staring at the ceiling, where yellow paint was peeling off in great, curling sheets.

  Tony appeared to be pulsating. “Didn’t you feel it?”

  “Feel what?”

  “The thing. The magic! The LOVE that this was meant to be from the beginning of time.”

  He gestured with the .357, tapping his chest.

  “It’s undeniable, right? The vibe. Between you and me.”

  Tony’s body broke into twitchy quiver, almost a seizure, and he made what he thought were goo-goo eyes. From somewhere, he pulled out a crack pipe, clamped it in his bloodstained teeth, and lit up with a purple Bic, all the while keeping the gun fixed at her breasts. He sucked wolfishly, exhaled, and squeezed his exposed organ.

  “Wanna hit? It’s life-changing.”

  “I’m good,” Tina said.

  “Have a hit,” Tony said again. “I’m not asking.”

  He shoved the pipe in her mouth and right off she could taste him. His sticky, toxic saliva. The dead-animal tang. He ran a flame along the bottom of the crusty glass.

  “Come on. You’ll thank me later.”

  Tina wanted to fake it, but that gun was huge. He might know, and then what? She wrapped her lips around the hot tube and sucked, willing her mind against the dirty rush. She’d done crack, but never enthusiastically. Her mother’s best girlfriend, Curly, used to bring over a few rocks when she came to baby-sit. Curly thought it was cute the way Tina got scared and began to dance after she gave her a hit. Tina hated how she felt after she did it, but she hated how she felt it before she did it, too, which is why she always went along. If she hesitated, Curly would promise her candy. But once she took a hit, Tina always forgot about the Clark Bar Curly didn’t have anyway. Right away, her heart would start banging on her chest like a child trapped in a coffin. Like it was banging now.

  After Zank slipped the pipe out of her mouth, he zoomed his face up to hers, until their lashes touched, and then he laughed. Tina felt the inside of her head turn to glass. She could not move or she would shatter. She held still as the bells gonged behind her eyeballs. That’s what she remembered: how noise got scary. Blood roaring through your veins. An airplane ten miles away screaming like a chainsaw between her ears. She fought the drug, but the drug won.

  When the volume faded, she saw Zank leering at her. He’d jammed the pipe back in his own mouth and loaded another rock. He flicked the Bic and sucked, until thick white smoke swirled inside the tube before flooding out his gory nostrils.

  Zank spoke through the acrid cloud. “I knew you wanted me, but you couldn’t say anything, right? Maybe the cop’s got something on you. But it’s okay. I can take care of him. We can be together. When I get the money for that photograph, we can go away. Just you and your Tony. The Bahamas are nice, but I’m thinking Israel.”

  Insane, Tina thought. Her two-minute ride had skidded to a stop, and her entire skull throbbed. Crack cocaine, when you didn’t want it, was like brain-rape. She lit up a cigarette just to do something.

  Tony cupped his sex nervously. “Israel’s the shit! They got great beaches there. The Dead fucking Sea. Ever heard of it? We make skunky love, head down to the Dead Sea. Float our asses off. I read all about it. You can pass out and nothin’ happens. Jesus peed in there, so the water’s got, like, healing powers. It’s beautiful.”

  “But Israel,” Tina repeated. “Are you…?”

  “Jewish? Damn straight. Proud member of the tribe. My daddy was actually Moe Zankberg. He changed his name ’cause he sold used farm equipment. Who’s gonna buy a John Deere from a Yid, right? Not that Moe was so hot, either. That’s why he named me Tony. ‘People like Tonies,’ that’s what he used to say. The stupid fucker.” Tony pounded himself with the gun. “Jew-genes, through and through. I got Hebrew DNA. So what do you say? Honeymoon on the Negev?”

  The cocaine had left Tina hyperaware. She shrank from Zank involuntarily, but he kept crowding her, reeking, full-frontal naked, his features a bloody mask of scabs and damage.

  Tony smiled in a way he no doubt thought seductive. That was the creepiest: He believed they had some kind of relationship. To keep from looking at him, she focused on the dusting of grime over the wound where she’d cut his earlobe off, the filthy bandage on his other ear, the ugly bruise across his throat. She tried to imagine what could have caught him under the Adam’s apple.

  “You don’t have to answer now,” he teased, doing a thing with his eyebrows. Then he stuck out his cankered tongue and wiggled it. “Maybe a kissy-poo will help you make up your mind. You took my drugs, you gotta at least French me.”

  He puckered up, and that was it. Tina made her move. Viceroy dangling from her mouth, she whipped out the razor, flipped it open, and brought her knee up in his exposed balls as she slashed. Tony hooted and juked backward. She’d sliced the bedspread, opening a gap from Tony’s foul shirt down to his fish-white thighs.

  “Shit!”

  She swung again, and caught his hip this time. The flesh opened like a wet pair of lips, but Tony only giggled. He fondled the wound and licked his fingers.

  “My soulmate.” He panted happily. “We’re gonna have crazy fun.”

  Grabbing her knife hand, he flipped the .357 in the air, caught it by the barrel, and swung the butt at her head. Tina ducked and, without thinking, jammed her cigarette in his pubic hair. The curls burned with a savage hiss.

  “Mmmm, yeah….” Tony moaned. “I can’t wait for the wedding. Iwanna go Animal Channel. I wanna fuck you in the neck. I wanna eat your pink ass like a hyena.”

  Still squeezin
g her wrist, he pointed the oily muzzle in her face and jammed her into a wall of mailboxes. He pressed himself into her, then stepped back, letting the bedspread fall away like the canvas at an unveiling.

  “Daddy needs some squinky love,” Zank warbled, breaking into a barefoot soft-shoe. “You’re my kinda gal. Wanna do it on the floor? Nobody lives in this palace but me. They say it stinks. But all I smell is your love-juice. I smell you wantin’ me like a trailer park geisha.”

  With an awful pang, Tony remembered that ho at the motel, and the memory made him jam his hand into Tina, right through her dress. He wasn’t going to let Tina play him that way. Tina was different. Tina wanted him.

  Zank busted his kiss-move, but she fought back, afraid of those black scabs on his lips, the fresh blood smeared on top of them. She raked her fingernails over his eyes, then knuckle-punched him, crunching the blue bruise over his Adam’s apple. Zank coughed and she hit him again. He fell back a step, and she ripped the filthy bandage off his ear.

  “What’s a matter,” Tony howled, “you anti-Semitic? We are going to have some times! I like a girl who plays hard to get. Makes me know you’re hot for it.” A car passed by and he dropped to a crouch. “Cover me, I’m going in!”

  Zank kicked open the lobby door and shoved Tina through ahead of him. She checked for exits. Nothing but filthy linoleum and scuffed walls. An OUT OF SERVICE sign slung on a chain across an open elevator shaft. Tony scratched at his scorched pubes with the gun. He crooked his head to the right, where a broad stairway littered with old newspapers and Iron City bottles mounted to watery light.

  “Up the stairs, party girl. I do you out there, some mau-mau’s gonna roll by and want a taste, then I got that to deal with. What I been through, I can’t handle a confrontation. I just want a little peace and quiet….”

  FORTY-TWO

  Lipton had finally gotten his sea legs.

  “I feel so foolish,” he kept saying, clearly appealing to Manny to tell him it was okay, that it happened to everybody. “I just completely broke down. I came apart.”

  “You came to your senses,” Manny reassured him. Anything to keep the nervous Brit together until they could get out of here. He considered slipping Lipton a codeine, but had a feeling he’d tell Marge. “You’re okay, that’s the important thing. What we’ve got to do now is get you out of here.”

  Lipton nodded too quickly, eyes bright with fear. “You’re right. The picture’s not even here. I know that now. I knew it as soon I came through the door.” He lowered his gaze and, unless Manny was hallucinating, kissed his own wrist. “I just needed to know I could do it. I’m a bit of a ninny, aren’t I? But, if you don’t mind me asking, are those yoga pants?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Manny managed a smile and cast one last glance around Zank’s slice of heaven. He took a breath of fetid air and realized, to his own surprise, that he felt all right. Now that he knew how Mayor Marge came by Mister Biobrain, he could relax a little. He had W. for flashing—not to mention adultery, drugs, and scrotal doodling—and now he had Marge for setting him up.

  Mission accomplished, he thought, ready to take it home, then he heard the noise outside. And knew at once: He’d just been worst-case scenarioed. He’d relaxed too soon.

  “This place is transitional!”

  Zank’s grating bellow echoed through the flimsy walls. He was raving in the hall outside the apartment.

  “That’s why I haven’t decorated! Once we move in together, I’ll trade up. What I want is a bear rug! And a fireplace! They got bears in Israel. Lotta people don’t know that. Jew-bears. They’re kinda sickly. I learned that. I got my GED in jail. Even went to junior college. There’s lots of stuff you don’t know about me, Tina.”

  Manny felt his blood turn to antifreeze. He held up a hand to Lipton, who’d gone green, and put a finger to his lips. He pointed to the couch, and Lipton skittered behind it.

  Once the Brit was out of sight, Manny tiptoed to the wall by the door, on the hinge side. He figured he’d count to five, wait till Zank was in all the way, then stick the gun in the back of his neck. It was scarier when metal touched flesh. If he tried something, Manny would have him cold. As long as Tina dove out of the way, the bullet wouldn’t catch her coming out of Zank’s throat. At least that was the general idea.

  “I never lock it,” Zank boomed, just on the other side of the door. “It’s reverse paranoia. Some junkie wants to boost the TV and sees the door’s unlocked, he’s gonna know something’s on. Like, what kind of person’s so ass-bad they don’t even lock their door? Think about that. He has to figure, he’s gonna walk in on somebody evil. I don’t even lock it when I’m home. I’d love for some scrunge to try robbin’ the place, just so I could fuck him up legal. I’d dick-shoot the guy. After you.”

  Manny held his breath as the knob started to turn. He could hear his pulse. He was listening to it, hard, when—Jesus Christ!—the phone rang. His own.

  Motherfucker! He always forgot to switch it to vibrate. He fumbled to get the thing out of his pocket and flipped it open out of habit.

  He kept the phone jammed in his ear and his shooting arm flat against the wall. The ranting outside had stopped.

  “Goddamn it, I know you’re there,” Fayton shouted on the other end. “It’s Krantz. He’s been shot and he says it’s your fault.”

  Manny cursed and stepped back from the door. He had to get rid of Fayton. But he’d just been accused of murder.

  “It was a domestic,” Fayton quacked on importantly. “The girlfriend got him in the back. Her old man was beating on her with a Dust Buster ’cause he wanted to watch pro wrestling and she wouldn’t stop cleaning. When Krantz got there, he told the lady it was her fault, she oughta be more understanding. He says you told him to say that. She got him in the ribs with a .22. Just missed his kidneys. Did you tell him that, Ruby? Well?”

  Manny wanted to smash the phone off the wall. “I’m hanging up,” he whispered furiously. “I’m in the middle of something.”

  “And I’m still the chief. I intend to conduct an investigation.”

  “Good. Dig up Chatlak and ask him,” Manny hissed, ready to tear his hair out. That’s what he needed right now, threats. “You bring me up on charges, Chatlak’s corpse is gonna be beside me in court, holding your cordless. We can have two investigations at once, save the tax payers some money.”

  “This isn’t over, Detective,” Fayton warned him, doing his best to sound ominous. He was still trying when Manny pounded END.

  By now Lipton’s ragged pompadour had popped up behind the couch. Manny signaled him to stay down, but Lipton ignored him, waving his hand like a prissy fifth-grader dying to get called on.

  “What?”

  Lipton made his face contrite. “I just need to know, was that Marge? Am I in trouble?”

  “Just stay out of sight,” Manny implored him. What the fuck else could happen?

  Manny took a deep breath and heard the click. The one you don’t want to hear. Two seconds later, the door blew off its hinges in a blast of wood and plaster that left him sprawled on the floor. The shot set Lipton off on a shriek-fit.

  Zank fired again and the sofa exploded, burying the Brit beneath a mound of dust and plywood and chunks of foam with green plaid still attached. The shrieking stopped. Manny opened his eyes and blinked through the smoke at a pair of naked legs, the left one slashed at the hip on a diagonal. He rolled sideways just in time to miss the blast Tony aimed at his head. The floor went away beside him, leaving a splintered hole, and Manny saw a room below, its walls refrigerator white, crisscrossed with shelves stacked with dusty cartons. Some had burst, spilling lumpen mold. Others were intact, bearing the unmistakable Smiling Sausage logo of Bundthouse Farms. That’s the smell, he thought, in the middle of everything. Whoever converted the Bundt-house plant into an apartment building had skipped the meatlocker, leaving a lifetime supply of links and patties to rot in their boxes.

  Tony’s manic war
ble brought Manny back. “I’m a little teapot!” he sang, rubbing his exposed gonads as he raised his fat-barreled weapon. Manny snatched up a dead Iron City and threw it, distracting him long enough to jerk left and get off a shot on the fly. The bullet caught Zank high on the hip and spun him around. The impact shattered the bone and sheared off a chunk of flesh, so it looked like something had started to gnaw his buttock and changed its mind after it got a taste.

  Tony gave a howl that sounded more joyous than painful. He fired as his legs went and Manny felt something gouge his hand. He looked down and saw a raw chicken leg on the carpet. Then he saw the ragged wound at his wrist and realized the chicken leg was his thumb. Manny clamped his good hand over the gushing nub, protecting it from sausage germs. Then he scooped his thumb off the foul carpet and stuffed it in his jacket pocket.

  Somewhere Lipton was wailing again. Zank screamed “Round and stout!” and got off another shot. This one knocked Manny onto his back. His head dangled over the splintered hole in the floor. His right side felt basted in liquid warmth. He couldn’t breathe. The stench from the sausage vault was mind-altering. It seemed to rise up in a solid waft.

  “Meatlocker of Death,” Manny muttered. To stay calm, inside moments of bad savagery, he sometimes pretended he was in a movie, that whatever he was trying to live through without losing his shit was not even real. He’d close his eyes and repeat, like a minor prayer, “I can go home whenever I want.” Sometimes that worked, but not now. Not when he was thumbless and gut-shot. When five feet away, dragging his shattered limb like a foreign object, Zank was crawling toward him, cackling as he dug the muzzle of his Colt Python .357 into the carpet for traction.

  “Tina bo bina,” Zank giggled. “Where you want me to shoot your boyfriend? I’m takin’ requests.”