Man Down

by Roger Smith

  Bone had his eyes on Tanya. “You sayin Daddy here knew Shorty?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he got him to come kill you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Make it look like a home invasion gone bad?”

  “Yes. That’s what I’m saying.”

  Bone looked at Tard. “Shorty never shared none of this with us.”

  “No he did not.”

  Bone contemplated Tanya. “Why Daddy want you dead? Insurance scam?”

  Tanya’s eyes were on Turner’s. “He wants me dead so he can have his whore.”

  Bone prodded Turner with a boot. “This true, boy?”

  “She’s crazy. She’s just trying to create a diversion.”

  “That what you doin? Tryin to mislead us?”

  “No. Take a look at Bekker’s right bicep. He’s got a tattoo on it. A skull.”

  Turner flashed back to the morning that Bekker woke him at gunpoint, crouched over the mattress in the Houghton cottage, the cop’s T-shirt riding up on his arm, the grinning mouth of the skull exposed, while Tanya stood in the doorway, her avid little eyes drinking in the scene, forgetting nothing.

  Bone said, “Oblige us, Tard. Check it out.”

  Tard levered himself down and pulled Bekker’s jacket free of his right shoulder and raised the T-shirt.

  “Ain’t no tattoo,” he said.

  Bone leaned in closer. “But there’s a scar, man. Like he had the ink burned away.” He stood. “You know what, Tard?”

  “What?”

  “I’m inclined to believe this skinny bitch.”

  “Okay.”

  “I reckon Shorty and Daddy here had plans for the future. Plans that didn’t include us, Tard.”

  He swung on Turner and kicked him in the ribs.

  “This true, Daddy?”

  Turner raised his hands. “She’s crazy. I don’t know this man.”

  Bone stared at him and then he nodded.

  “I think it’s time for the plain unvarnished truth to be spoken in this room.”

  He stripped off his surgical gloves, letting them fall like obscene party favors to the wooden floor, and reached up a hand and lifted off his mask, revealing a face that nature had tweaked a few degrees away from handsome: blue eyes adrift too wide apart on the plains of his flat cheekbones; something asymmetrical about the mouth that was too full-lipped over a receding chin; the hairline of his white-blond mane growing in too close to his almost invisible eyebrows.

  “My name’s Lukas Bone and this here is Tard. Short for Retard. Cause he’s a fuckin moron. Show them your pretty face, Tard.”

  Tard allowed Tanya to slide to the floor in a heap and followed orders, shedding his gloves and unveiling a head as immense as an Easter Island statue, a few strands of thin hair plastered to his skull by some kind of gasoline-scented pomade.

  His many-times broken nose sat crooked on his face, a pair of tiny eyes, dark as cigarette burns, peering from the shadow of the shelf of bone that was his brow. Giggling, his wet mouth fringed by a straggle of hair gaping on missing teeth, he used the thumb and index finger of his right hand to worry at a custardy pustule that poked from the filthy folds of his wrinkled neck.

  Lukas Bone saw the expressions on the faces of the Turners and he laughed.

  “Oh yeah, aint we somethin? We were blown in by an ill wind from a place of bad choices and worse luck.”

  “That’s right purty, Lukas.”

  “Thank you, Tard.”

  “And it gets purtier each time you say it.”

  Tanya shook her head at Turner.

  “Congratulations you cuntstruck piece of shit, you’ve killed us all.”

  7

  The resort that hosted PoolCon—rising like an immense domino tile from the Strip—was a shimmering light trap purpose-built to lure Middle America in its hordes.

  As Turner and Grace checked in, jostled by tanned, toothsome conventioneers, Grace said, “Meet me back here in an hour and I’ll show you a bit of old Vegas.”

  Turner showered and dressed in the only suit he owned—a relic of his Jo’burg days, the style so dated that it was almost fashionable again—a midnight blue sharkskin shiny as a scummy puddle of gasoline, cut just too narrow for a body once kept lean by youth and chemical abuse but surrendering now to early middle-age, a small paunch swelling the buttons of his white silk shirt.

  As he finger combed his damp hair before the bedroom mirror Turner felt a strange dislocation, as if the essence of the man he’d once been still lurked in the fabric of the suit.

  A sudden barrage of bloody memories kneecapped Turner and had him sitting on the bed, staring sightlessly at the giant abstract of vomitous beige swirls suspended above the vanity table.

  He was tempted to call Grace and beg off.

  But his urge to escape the suddenly claustrophobic room had him making for the vast lobby, where he stood beneath a desert succulent watching the bank of elevators.

  Turner heard somebody say “John” and spun, confronted by his adolescent fantasy made manifest: a big blonde in a black sequined cocktail dress that could have been painted onto her.

  An anxious look crossed Grace’s face, like a rogue cloud on a summer’s day.

  “Is this too much?” she asked, slumping a little, flapping her hands at the dress.

  “No,” Turner said, the words that she was waiting for—that she deserved—the words of flattery and seduction that he’d once been able to spout with such facility stuck like a hook bone in a throat dry with nerves and rust.

  But his face must’ve betrayed his feelings for she smiled and twirled, her dress shimmering like moonlight on the ocean as it settled on her curves, calling, “Come,” over her shoulder.

  A taxi took them away from the epileptic neon of the Strip and left them in a warren of older casinos.

  Turner tailed Grace into a cavernous room where aging cocktail waitresses (like harnessed cattle with drinks trays strapped to their shoulders) shuffled past empty gaming tables tended by mournful croupiers who stood waiting to deal cards and spin wheels.

  A dusky man in a soiled leisure suit, a comma of oily hair falling across his left eye, turned from the craps table and offered Grace the dice to kiss—she smooched them as she passed—and the mulatto rolled them with a careless flick of the wrist.

  They were already walking by the time the dice landed and the stickman made his call, but Turner knew the quadroon had won.

  They were led to a lounge off the casino by the snake-like brushing of a snare drum and a throaty trumpet.

  Bathed in purple light, a quartet, all over fifty, all with Humpty Dumpty waistlines straining at their white jumpsuits, launched into a languid version of “The Look of Love.”

  As he and Grace crossed to sit Turner saw a bar counter, a few rows of tables holding a sprinkle of gray haired patrons, a small stage and an empty dance floor, spotlights spearing down indigo shafts from the ceiling.

  “So, is this Rat Pack enough for you?” Grace asked, lowering herself into a chair.

  “It makes me feel so young,” Turner said and Grace laughed. “How do you know about this place?”

  “Years ago I dealt blackjack at a casino nearby.”

  “You were a croupier?”

  “For a while.”

  “Why’d you stop?”

  She looked at him, her eyes never leaving his as she lit a smoke.

  “I was what they call a party pit dealer.”

  He shook his head.

  “I dealt blackjack dressed in lingerie,” she said as she waved the match dead.

  He stared at her. “You’re kidding me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I’d like to have seen that.”

  “No, you wouldn’t’ve. The tips were good but, believe me, it got tired real fast. The highlight of my night would be watching a turf war between two hookers fighting to work the high limit poker room.”

  A waitress arrived to take their order and Grace
said to Turner, “I know what I said on the plane but I’m going to get a little liquored up, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  She ordered a Jack and Coke and raised her painted eyebrows at Turner.

  “A club soda?”

  “Yes.”

  The waitress left and Grace took a long drag on her cigarette, looking at Turner through the smoke.

  “So, John,” she said, “tell me your dark secrets.”

  Turner shook his head.

  “I don’t have any.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true.”

  “We all have dark secrets.”

  “Then tell me yours.”

  She laughed and shook her head, stubbing out her cigarette.

  The song ended to a smattering of applause and for moment they were left in silence. Then a man close to seventy, wearing a tuxedo, a curly black hair piece perched on his head like a toy Pomeranian, trotted onto the stage and launched into a hoarse rendition of “Witchcraft.”

  Standing, Grace said, “Let’s dance,”

  “I don’t dance,” Turner said.

  Grace held out her hand.

  “Come.”

  Turner stood and allowed her into his arms.

  It was awkward at first, but Grace leaned in close and he felt himself melt a little against her heat, the scent of her in his nostrils.

  They danced their way through a Sinatra playlist and then they returned to their table and as Grace drank and smoked a warmth took Turner low, a heaviness dragging at his groin and he wished he could open his fist—clenched with desire and the terror it had induced—and see three yellow and black pills lying like a trio of dead bumblebees on his palm, pills that would fold him in their narcotic embrace and soothe his anxiety.

  “Come, John,” Grace said, taking his hand and leading him from the lounge.

  Back at the hotel Turner followed her across the echoing expanse of the tiled lobby to a waiting elevator, his rubber-soled shoes a pair of squealing mice taking fright at the gunshots fired by the heels of her stilettos.

  Turner pressed for the twentieth floor and the doors had almost closed when there was a discreet ping and they whispered open again, revealing three couples in evening dress who joined them in the cabin, journeying to the penthouse restaurant.

  They were in their fifties, the men clearly prosperous, sleek and well-fed and their women—with helmets of hair like confections of spun sugar—were fashionably gaunt, wearing the haunted expressions of the terminally malnourished.

  Turner retreated, his back to the mirror, Grace forced up against him as the cabin filled.

  As the elevator drifted upward Turner saw Grace’s hand at her neck, shifting her hair so that it swept over her left shoulder, leaving her back revealed. Her fingers, deft as a conjurer’s, loosened the clasp of her dress.

  Turner hesitated for a moment and then he took hold of the tab of the zipper that ran from the nape of her neck to the cleft of her buttocks and unzipped the dress with a slow, fluid motion, the teeth making a little purr of pleasure as they gaped.

  The fabric of the dress fell open on the pale skin of Grace’s back, revealing the black strap of her brassiere and then, when the tab ran dead against its stopper, the lace fringing of her panties.

  Grace had a beautiful spine, each vertebra standing clearly delineated beneath her taut skin, like a fine necklace of bone.

  Turner, standing side-on to Grace, his groin pressed against her upper thigh, ran the index finger of his right hand slowly down her backbone and she shivered and a rash of gooseflesh spread across her skin—as distinct as Braille to his fingers.

  Turner felt his cock harden and rear up against her hip as his fingers disappeared beneath the hem of her underwear, traveling over her buttocks that clenched at his touch and finding the moist heat between her legs.

  One of the women glanced back, blinked and then looked away, fixing her eyes on the LEDs counting them upward, her mandible working as she chewed her molars.

  The elevator sighed to a stop and the doors oiled open onto the carpeted corridor, Turner’s hand still buried in Grace’s dripping center like some profane glove puppeteer.

  Turner withdrew his hand and guided Grace through the couples, their eyes drawn to her unsheathed spine, and as the doors closed he heard mutters of outrage.

  When they reached her room Grace slipped the keycard into its slot and the mechanism whirred and clicked. Turner pushed open the door.

  Once they were inside Grace kicked the door closed, the room dark but for the slit of light that seeped in from the corridor. She threw Turner against the wall hard enough to jolt the air from his lungs.

  As Turner gasped for breath she covered his mouth with hers and kissed him, her tongue searching for his, his hands dragging her dress up over her hips, yanking at her underwear.

  Grace’s hands shook as she took hold of his belt, freeing the tongue from the silver buckle, the leather screaming softly as she bent it to release the prong from the notch.

  The belt fell open with a muted jangle and as Grace unbuttoned Turner’s pants the hot weight of his flesh brushed her skin and, again, he was starved for breath.

  She ran a fingertip along the length of him and then she stepped away, walking into the blackness toward the bed, the sheen of her dress like swarming fireflies in the dark before she disappeared.

  8

  Turner sat with his back to the living room wall watching Lukas Bone and Tard leaning their elbows on the kitchen island, talking softly. Tanya stood hugging herself, staring out through the glass door at the glowing rectangle of the swimming pool.

  Turner’s gaze shifted to Bekker’s body, the grip of the dead man’s pistol just visible in the waistband of his jeans, behind his right hip.

  The weapon that would be in a state of Condition 1 readiness.

  Turner back with Bekker one night in the Mercedes with its death pall, ranging through Johannesburg, the bent cop saying, “Life, Englishman, is all about edges. Advantages. About seeing around fucking corners. Like this.” He freed a hand from the wheel and slapped the automatic at his side, “I always keep one in the pipe. Same with everything else. Be ready. Be first. If you wanna catch a fox, you’ve got to be in the fuckin forest.”

  “How’s that working out for you?” Turner felt like asking Bekker, now that the ex-cop had been terminally trumped in Tanya’s spin on Rock-Paper-Scissors.

  Bone, crossing to Tanya, jabbed a finger at Turner.

  “Watch him, Tard.”

  The brute took the order literally, squatting down and staring into Turner’s eyes, the wash of his sewer breath a noxious cloud.

  When Turner tried to look away the beast clamped his jaw in fingers unspeakably filthy, the stench rising from the grime caked in the grooves of his skin and under the torn nails redolent of night soil and charnel houses.

  Bone stood close enough to Tanya for her to feel the heat of his body.

  “I see you wear a wedding ring?” he said.

  She stayed silent, watching the tireless pool cleaner do its work, wishing she were in the water, naked and clean.

  “Answer me, now.”

  “Yes, I wear a wedding ring.”

  “But he don’t?” Nodding toward Johnny.

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  Bone sniffed and cleared mucous from his throat.

  “I have no respect for a man who doesn’t honor his vows. You’re of a like mind aint you, Tard?”

  “You better know I am,” the geek replied, still eyeballing Johnny.

  Bone held up his left hand, a flash of silver on his fourth finger.

  “I’ll go to my grave wearing this ring.”

  Tard wagged a hand in front of Johnny’s face. A tarnished wedding band peered through the folds of fat in his filthy digit.

  “Until death us do part,” he said.

  “Since this state o
nce frowned upon the union between two men, Tard and me had to travel to California to get wedded a few years ago.”

  “All the way to Los Angeles.”

  “Exchanged our vows at a courthouse in Tarzana.”

  “Always loved that name. Tarzana.”

  “Why we took us that little pilgrimage.”

  Bone leaned against the glass, smiling down at Tanya.

  “Then we treated ourselves to a honeymoon in the Mojave, didn’t we, Tard?”

  “Sweet memories, Lukas.”

  “Oh, the sweetest, Tard. The sweetest.” Bone laughed. “Remember that hitcher we picked up over to Baker?”

  “Chunky fellah in his forties?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Weren’t he a pussy?”

  “Goddam, he proved to be a disappointment. Just two days and his flabby heart gave out.”

  Tard giggled swamp gas. “Next one was a keeper though.”

  “Yeah, that skinny little lot lizard we snagged at that truck stop. Where was it, Tard? Barstow?”

  “Ludlow.”

  “Yeah, Ludlow.”

  “She was a feisty little thing.”

  “Lasted three weeks, remember?”

  “Oh, I do. I do remember.”

  “Cursing us to all kinds of hell until you ripped out her tongue with a pair of crimping pliers.”

  “Yeah. That tongue smacked of tobaccy and jism and Thunderbird wine.”

  “You’re a fuckin epicurean, Tard.”

  “Don’t rightly know what that means, Lukas.”

  “Means you have a fine palate.”

  “A fine palate?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I’ll own as I do.”

  “You know, this skinny cunt kinda brings that lot lizard to mind,” Bone said, nudging Tanya’s calf with his work boot.

  “Damn right, Lukas. Two peas in a pot.”

  “Pod.”

  “Pod?”

  “Pod.” Bone nodded at Turner. “I’m bettin she’ll last a lot longer than him.”

  “Who can say?”

  “Well, the proof of the puddin will be in the eatin.”

  “Surely will.”

  Bone headed toward the front door.

  “I’m steppin out to bring some equipment from the truck, Tard. You have the conn.”