“Those redneck assholes are shooting at us!” he said.
Asia was not there. She was already slamming the door of the truck closed behind her, and Crispin began to squeal in terror as the smoke from the starting motor washed over him and the wheels began to roll. Earth spattered his face as Asia spun the truck round in a tight circle, so that it was between him and the source of the gunfire. Three more shots rang out, dinging into the driver’s side door as she screamed at him to get in. In a total panic, Crispin wobbled to his feet, slipped, fell headlong, struggled up again, and clambered into the cabin, panting like a hot dog.
As Asia gunned the engine the windshield came out with a bright, metallic glitter, and one of the headlights popped. Feeling the wind in her face, she pressed the pedal to the floor and was headed for the gap in the trees that marked the beginning of the track when she felt the sudden heaviness in the steering that told her one of the front tires had been hit. Struggling to control the leaden vehicle on the soft earth, she saw a flash of white in the remaining headlight, and realized that a car had been parked sideways across the track. Asia aimed for the car’s front fender and plowed forward. Crispin’s door was still swinging open, and it slammed shut as the heavy truck crumpled the car’s front panels and propelled it from the road. Crispin—who was in shock and carefully brushing pieces of glass from his lap as if the cause were nothing more serious than a spilled drink—was thrown backwards onto Asia, preventing her from steering. She was yelling at him to move when another set of headlights directly in front suddenly burst to life, blinding her. She instinctively swerved, saw an oncoming tree, tried to swerve again, heard a deafening noise, and was briefly aware of a flying sensation before the bright lights around her were extinguished.
When she came to, someone was playing with her tits. She tried to sit up, but heavy hands restrained her. Looking up she saw a pair of hairy balls and a hand stroking a semi-erect penis and felt her jeans being tugged over her feet. She screamed and began to struggle, but someone kicked her in the stomach, knocking the wind from her. She lay still, trying to catch her breath. Crispin was slumped in the door of the truck with blood dripping from a gash over his forehead.
“May as well have some fun with this before it gets cold,” someone said.
Asia felt a hand trying to invade her, and pressed her thighs together. She heard laughter.
“Oh. She’s worried she ain’t gonna get paid. You gonna pay, ain’t ya, Joey?”
“Sure. I’m gonna give her a pounda flesh.”
More laughter. The one who had been playing with himself had managed to attain a serviceable erection and he knelt between Asia’s thighs, trying to force them open with his knees. She could smell the booze on his breath and see his leering, pockmarked face. Two hands were still reaching over her shoulders and roughly massaging her breasts, and the one kneeling over her slapped these hands away and then slapped her hard across the face, twice. Backhand and forehand.
When she opened her eyes, his expression had changed from lascivious to surprised. He had his hands on his shirtfront as if he had suddenly discovered that he had spilled something on his tie. The man looked inquiringly at Asia, as if expecting her to explain the red flower that had mysteriously appeared and begun to grow across his chest. Asia felt herself released and she brought her knees up and kicked the man viciously in the nose with both feet, sending him toppling backwards.
Just then an impromptu fireworks display began, and a bright cannonade erupted from the nearby tree line, painting the night white and orange. Asia rolled over in the cool grass into the lee of a tree trunk as men began to run and fall around her with odd, jerky movements, illuminated intermittently by the strobe lights of the gunshots.
The banging and flashes abruptly stopped and the blackness and silence rushed in to take their place. Asia lay still, the after-glare of the gunfire descending like blue flares across her pupils, straining her ears to pick up the shuffling and scraping noises she could hear. She heard the unmistakable sound of shell cases being dumped out of a cylinder, and then a woman’s voice.
“Asia. Asia, hon. Y’all okay?”
“Irene. Yeah, I’m all right. I’m over here.”
A torch beam found her, and she tried to cover her nakedness with her hands. The beam remained steady.
“Kill that flashlight, you asshole,” she heard Irene say.
The light blinked out and Irene came waddling over, carrying a blanket in one hand and a smoking .45 in the other. Nate followed accompanied by the bloodhound, who immediately tried to shove his snout into Asia’s beaver.
Nate booted him up the ass. “Yodel, cut that out fo ah whupp yo ass, y’hear?”
If Yodel heard, he didn’t say anything. The three other men gathered around, also holding smoking weapons. Irene handed her the blanket. It smelled like a bear’s outhouse.
“Here,” said Irene, “cover them jugs with this for these un’s here get to droolin’. It’s okay. Yodel don’t need it for a while anyway. Y’all hurt?”
“No. Couple of bumps and bruises, but I’m okay. What about Crispin?”
“Oh, he’s fine. Bit of a knot on the haid, but he’ll live.”
“Thank God. I think I went through the windscreen. Lucky the glass was already out. And lucky you all came back. They were going to…”
“We know,” said Nate. “We saw. An’ t’weren’t no luck, neither.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we picked them fellas up just after we left town. Rolled behind us with no lights. Figured they’s the law, or else after the truck maybe. We dint wanna say nuthin case y’all wuz frit. Anyways, we lef’ the boats in yonder grove and doubled back. Soon as we seen the gunfire we let ‘er rip. Dropped all them fellas.”
“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Thanks, shit,” said one of the men. “Hell, girl, that was more fun’n a turkey shoot.”
“Jus’ like the good ol’ days back in the ‘Nam, when y’all could shoot anyone y’ant to, an’ wouldn’t nobody say nuthin to ya,” said another.
“Hell, yes,” said the third. “Anyways, we dint see no gators nohow. Who the hell are these assholes, anyway?”
“I don’t know who they are. But I know who sent them. And I know he’ll send more. We’ll have to go away.”
“Shit, if all them sumbitches’r dumb as these here, they can send all they want.”
“Yeah. Me’n the boys’ll take care a y’all, missy.”
“No. Thanks anyway. But we’ll have to leave. What about the police? What shall we do?”
“Sheriff don’t like to come this far out lessen he’s fishin’. ‘Sides, paperwork’d seriously piss him off. We just push them vehicles into the swamp and let the gators take care a this carrion here.”
“Where y’all thinking ‘bout goin?” Irene asked.
“I don’t know. I really don’t. But I’ve got a friend. Baby Joe. He’s in Vietnam now. I’ll call him and tell him what happened. He will know what to do. He always knows what to do.”
Asia and Irene attended to the stricken Crispin while Nate and the others patched up the truck and changed the tire. By flashlight they carefully collected all the weapons and the spent shell cases. Two of the men went to fetch the boats while the others stripped the three bodies, and an hour later the corpses were gator bait, slowly settling into the sediment at the bottom of the river. The men drove the two cars to a remote section of the swamp and pushed them into the water, waiting until the last of the bubbles had disappeared before painstakingly erasing any tire marks and walking back to where Nate, Irene, Asia, Crispin, and Yodel waited by the pickup. As they set off they heard a splashing, away in the distance, and Yodel leapt over the side of the slow-moving truck and went baying off into the bayou. Nate retrieved him with a long, piercing whistle and gave him another boot up the ass to help him back into the truck. By midnight, they were all sitting back in the bar on the levee.
&n
bsp; Asia took Crispin off to a side table and sat him down. He had not spoken since the incident and looked pale and sad and tired, and utterly defeated.
“Crispin, we have to leave. First thing in the morning. We can’t stay. I have no idea how they found us, but they did. And if they can find us here, then where can we go that’s safe? I have to call Baby Joe. He’s the only one I trust and the only one who will know what to do. Okay?”
Crispin nodded, and Asia started to get up to rejoin the others. Crispin laid his fat hand on her arm. Quietly he said, “Asia?”
“Yes?”
“Wherever Baby Joe tells you to go, promise me that I can go, too.”
Asia turned back and put her arms around Crispin’s bowed shoulders. She kissed him on his fat cheek.
“Of course,” she said.
Chapter 14.
Monsoon Parker was badly shocked. He was badly shocked for three reasons. One reason was that whoever had done the wiring in the shithouse at Wal’s Outback had not done a very good job and, when Monsoon had flicked the light switch while standing in a pool of mis-aimed urine, he had gotten quite a jolt. The second reason was that when the light eventually flickered into existence, it revealed not row upon row of shiny silver packets, but a whitewashed wall. The third reason was that as he had stepped, cursing, into the sunlight, he had seen his grandfather wobbling out of the door.
The first item on the agenda, once he had reached his gentleman’s agreement with Frankie Merang and had been allowed a little fighting room, had been to discover if his perhaps-delusionary hopes concerning the existence of the king’s ransom’s worth of mind-altering chemical substance in Wally’s outhouse were substantiated. Electric shocks, plaster, and grandfathers did not come under the category of delusionary hope. However, as shocked as he was Monsoon had had the presence of mind to duck down out of view—although given Bjørn Eggen’s condition it is doubtful that he would have noticed Monsoon if Monsoon had been riding a fluorescent orange Mardi Gras float with an ostrich on his head and a pineapple up his ass.
Monsoon recognized Wally, although he looked much older than his photo. Actually, he looked much older than the Declaration of Independence. The other guy seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place him. Monsoon decided that he was now officially seriously confused.
Monsoon had arrived via an ancient Peugeot taxi, its circa-1950 engine busily contributing to the miasma of toxic lung soup that served the locals as air. He had decided to be incognito until after he checked out the outhouse, so he was wearing a pair of unobtrusively obtrusive Bootsy Collins shades and a Rasta wig, which was threatening to implode his skull at any moment in the outrageous heat and humidity. A rivulet of sweat, resembling a small but significant tributary of the Amazon, was roiling down the back of his neck, soaking his shirt and shorts both. A pair of airport-bought leather Jesus boots completed his ensemble.
Pulling up outside Wal’s Outback he had bidden the driver wait, slipped gratefully into the cool interior, and ordered a beer and back. The beer had been scintillatingly cold and, despite his anxiety to get to the head, he had savored it. He had gobbled the whisky, ordered the same again, asked about the outhouse, and strode breathlessly towards the back.
What he was seeing conformed—allowing for a little modification here and there—to the images in the somewhat-soggy photos in his top pocket, and a rising tide of hope flushed him into the bathroom, only for harsh reality to abruptly terminate its flow with AC/DC and plaster. After recovering somewhat from the shock he was confronted by a wall daubed with standard-issue barroom bathroom graffiti, unremarkable except for one especially well-executed drawing of an improbable sexual position accompanied by the legend of what Mo the Schmo could do to himself.
As Monsoon stared at the wall and its messages, meaningless and infinitely significant at the same time, attempting to deal with the volcanic surge of disappointment and despair that was welling up from his intestines and threatening to make him nauseous, he saw a glimmer of hope. Literally. The plasterwork had obviously been done by the same guy that did the wiring. A section at the top left corner was unevenly covered, and the faintest glimmer showed between the cracks. Monsoon spat on his finger and rubbed at the crack. It didn’t tell him much either way.
Earlier, he had made a few calls and had tracked down a sister of his mother’s. He had given her some bullshit about his roots and his birthright and his father and his mother’s grave, and she had swallowed it and was sending some cousin to pick him up that evening. He would return like the prodigal bum, and ingratiate himself back into the bosom of his family in case he needed to pull a Houdini. Later, he would recruit some muscle from his family and come back and open the wall. He went back to the bar, downed his drinks, and had one foot in the stark, glaring street when he saw The Three Lushketeers come bobbing and weaving out of a back room.
“What the fuck?” was the question that came immediately to mind. Other questions followed hot on its heels. What was the old man doing here, how had he gotten away from the Don, how had he found Wal’s Outback, did it mean the money was here, what was the connection between the old man and Woolloomooloo Wally, did they know each other, what else did the old man know about, what had he told Wally about him, what was he going to do now? Etc., etc.
In the absence of a better idea he was on the point of shouting his grandfather’s name, when a venerable oriental proverb leapt into his mind. When the way is not clear, do nothing. He skulked back over to the waiting cab and told the driver to keep Baby Joe, Bjørn Eggen, and Wally in sight, trailing them until he saw them stagger precariously up the swaying gangplank of an old junk. Across the street was a small café. Monsoon cut the cab driver loose and sidled into its dim interior for a drink and a think. He decided to stake out the boat for a while and see what developed.
He pondered the permutations, complications, and consequences of the sudden and unexpected appearance of his grandfather. He searched for his conscience, but decided he must have left it on the plane. Nobody had ever really given a fuck about him, so why should he care about some old duffer that he barely knew? He took a seat by a small, flyspecked window, ordered a bottle of what professed to be vodka but turned out to be crank oil, and eyeballed the boat. Taking a drag from his cigarette, he studied the junk through the smoke.
It had more animals on it than Noah’s Ark, and looked to be around the same vintage, and how many kids did that old bastard have? There was this fucking tribe of them, swarming all over the boat like pirates with afros. He watched as they all gathered at the foot of the gangplank with their wild hair waving in the breeze, looking like a field of giant black dandelions, with one of the older ones addressing them and pointing. Then, as if a sudden big wind had dispersed them, they all scattered and went racing off in every direction.
Monsoon leaned forward to sip his crank oil, and then sat back into the shadows. As the crank oil, which he was beginning to get a taste for, slowly went down, he formulated his plan, rather more practical than scintillating in this case. He would buttonhole Wally on his own and give him the spiel. He would tell him that he had a big surprise planned for his grandfather, and decoy everybody away from Wal’s Outback. Then, with the help of his cousin, he would open the outhouse wall and take it from there.
Wally had appeared at the top of the gangplank with his grandfather and that other guy. Again Monsoon searched the backrooms of his memory for something to hang onto him, a name or an incident, but it would not come. The guy looked dangerous, though, kind of compact and contained, like a cocked hammer. As Monsoon watched the three men shook hands, and the guy helped his grandfather down the swaying plank. They waved back up at Wally and flagged a cab. As they climbed in the guy looked directly at the window that Monsoon was looking out of, and Monsoon shuffled further back, deeper into the gloom. As the cab pulled away he watched Wally scratch his belly, pat one of the dogs on the head, and disappear back into the boat.
Waiting until the taxi was gone,
Monsoon chugged the crank oil, took a drag from his cigarette, and flicked it, still burning, into the street. As he stepped onto the gangplank, some kid picked up the cigarette and walked away, smoking it.
The Don was seriously, seriously pissed off, and Stratosphere and Liberty knew it. The reason that Stratosphere and Liberty knew that the Don was seriously, seriously pissed off was because the Don was saying, “Gli idioti. Che ho fatto per meritare questo. Sono circondato dall’imbecilles. Catso.Vaffanculo stronzo!” and waving his arms about like an Italian.
And the only time the normally imperturbable Don waved his arms about like an Italian and said, “Gli idioti. Che ho fatto per meritare questo. Sono circondato dall’imbecilles. Catso.Vaffanculo stronzo!” was when he was seriously, seriously pissed off.
The man sitting opposite Don Imbroglio was terrified in direct proportion to the Don’s pissed-offedness. And not only was the man terrified, he was wounded. He had a patch over one eye, a bandage around his throat, one arm in a cast, and a dressing on the left side of his head where his ear had formerly been attached. Oh, and a fat lip.
Except for this latter, the wounds he displayed were a result of being caught up, two days earlier, in a gunfight with a crew of psychotic, moonshine-soaked rednecks in an alligator-infested swamp. The fat lip was a result of Stratosphere punching him in the mouth, two minutes earlier.
The Don strode from the room onto his balcony, and when he returned he had stopped waving his arms about like an Italian and had resumed his customary, reasonable, dulcet English tone, which caused the man to become even more terrified than previously.
“So, what you would have me believe is that I sent four well-armed men to dispense with an overweight, middle-aged, homosexual lounge singer and a novice prostitute, and not only are three of these men dead, but I am missing two expensive vehicles, and the overweight, middle-aged, homosexual lounge singer and the novice prostitute are not only still alive, but have disappeared, after I went through a great deal of trouble and expense to find them in the first place.”
Machine Gun Jelly (Big Bamboo Book 1) Page 24