“Hey, fuckface,” the fat man said behind me. “Coffee.”
“Coming up,” Muhammad said. He started to turn away, and I put my hand on his arm. He twitched galvanically but stopped.
“Him too?” I said.
“Sure. Sure, him too. Like I told you, anybody who can get them. Listen, is it legal to serve coffee?”
I lifted my hand, and he bustled around doing his job. When he put the cup on the saucer it jittered. He carried it to the fat man and put it on the table, and the fat man asked him a question, his eyes on me. Muhammad shook his head hurriedly and came back to the counter.
“Get out of here,” he said quietly, pouring more coffee into my cup. “Don't come back unless you've got a platoon with you.”
All the black, bitter bile I'd been holding back since the moment Yoshino had pulled down that white sheet rose into the back of my throat. I could hear my heart in my ears. “The hell with it,” I said to Muhammad. “Nobody lives forever.”
The stool squealed as I swiveled around so that my back was to the counter. The fat man looked directly at me and blew onto the surface of his coffee. His lips were thick, loose, and rubbery, and his sideburns ended in knife-sharp points that angled downward toward his fatty pudding of a mouth. His T-shirt said, You can die looking. The icecream pimp and his girl were in conversation, but the hardcase with the Japanese or Korean girl narrowed his eyes at me and turned the chain saw up to the setting marked Amputate. The girl, slower than her protector, gave me a tiny, stoned smile. Then she looked at him and stopped smiling.
I put my elbows up on the counter and stared back. “Oh, Jesus,” Muhammad said behind me.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” I said to the room as a whole.
The ice-cream pimp stopped talking and turned to face me. His girl looked at her feet.
“I hate to interrupt your sugar rush,” I said pleasantly, “but I've got a problem. You see, I'm looking for somebody.”
“Golly,” the fat man said after a long moment. “Who would of thought it?” He looked beyond me at Muhammad, who produced the first audible cringe I'd ever heard.
“What's your name?” I said to the Japanese or Korean girl.
“Junko,” she said. Japanese, then.
“Jennie,” her protector corrected, taking her left hand and squeezing it until the knuckles turned white. “And Jennie doesn't know anybody.”
Junko/Jennie sucked her breath in sharply. I heard her knuckles crack. “No,” she said to him, and he sat upright in a jerky fashion, looking genuinely astonished, and bent her hand back sharply. “No,” she said in a much higher voice, readdressing herself to me. “I don't know anybody.”
“She doesn't,” Muhammad said behind me. “She doesn't know anybody in the whole world.” Junko emitted a thin squeal. The hardcase kept his eyes on me.
“Let go of her hand,” I said to the hardcase. “Let go of her hand or I'll cut out your fucking tongue and feed it to the pigeons.”
He dropped Junko's hand and lifted his own and displayed it, palm open and empty. “Hey,” he said, “am I looking for an argument?”
“You?” the fat man said in disbelief. “Mr. Flower Power?”
“He looks like a nice guy,” I said. I still hadn't gotten up, and Muhammad tugged at the back of my shirt. I sat forward and he let go with a long sigh.
“He is,” the fat man said, sitting back in his chair. “What with his widowed mother and all.”
“Am I a nice guy, Jennie?” the hardcase asked. The girl, who had been tentatively flexing her fingers and wrist, looked up at him as though her head had been jerked on a string and nodded.
“Junko,” I said, getting up. “Do you know her?”
I put the yearbook picture of Aimee on the table in front of her. She shook her head in the negative without glancing down.
“Look at it,” I said.
She turned her eyes to the hardcase, and he lifted his eyebrows in a classic gesture of indifference. The only sound was the fat man slurping his coffee. Then she looked down at the picture, and a tiny jolt of electricity went through her shoulders.
“But she's-” she said.
The hardcase slapped his hand down over the photo and said, “Tssss.” Junko sat back as though she'd been slapped, and gazed at him. “But she is,” she said.
“Tsssss,” he said again. Then he looked at me. “She doesn't know her,” he said. The knife scar above his mouth twitched. It was a thin, curved, clean slice that traveled from the side of his nose right through his upper lip.
“I know you're a nice guy,” I said. “Look at your character witnesses. But at the moment, I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to Junko.”
“Junko’s not talking to you,” he said. He picked up his plastic cup of Coke and sipped at it. “So fuck off,” he said.
“There's a bug in your Coke,” I said.
He looked down at it, and I slapped him across the face. My hand caught the Coke and sent it flying. I slapped him again backhand just to let off some steam. His head rocketed back, and Junko let out a tiny scream. The ice-cream pimp's girl watched in fascination. The Coke had hit the wall and made a nice brown splash.
“I’d punch you,” I explained, “but you're not worth it.”
He got up slowly. There was a big red splotch heating up on each of his cheeks. The scar was white and livid.
“Oh,” I said, “I'd love you to.”
He had to step behind Junko to cross behind the table and get to me. When he was standing directly behind her, he gave me a crooked smile, grabbed a knot of her hair in one hand, and yanked backward. Her head went back and her eyes rolled.
“Stick out your tongue, Jennie,” he said to her. Her tongue came out all the way to the bottom of her chin, and his other hand appeared with a knife in it. It was a very shiny knife. He angled the blade down toward Junko's tongue and touched it against the pink surface. The edge was angled away from her face so that if she pulled her tongue back the knife would slice right through. “Don't move,” he said to her. Then he looked back at me.
“So,” he said, “you want to feed somebody's tongue to the pigeons?” He gave me the full chain-saw grin. “We got a tongue right here,” he said. “Good as any deli.” He let go of her throat and tugged at the tip of her tongue. “Don't suck it in, honey, or you'll lisp for life.”
The girl had closed her eyes. Her fine black hair curled on her shoulders and her body was quivering, but her tongue was as still as if it had been carved from marble.
“Okay,” I said, “she doesn't know her. Let her go.”
One of his eyebrows arched upward. “Oh, don't worry,” he said. “I'm going to let her go. Paul.”
The fat man stood up and moved behind him. “May I be of service, my dear?” he asked in a courtly fashion.
“Hold her tongue,” the hardcase said.
“A pleasure,” Paul said. He reached two greasy fingers down and took the tip of Junko's tongue between them. A knife materialized in his other hand and came to rest where the hardcase's blade had been a moment before. Junko moaned.
“You and me,” the hardcase said, stepping away from her. “Back to the pinballs.”
“I don't play pinballs,” I said, looking at the fat man's knife against Junko's tongue.
“You're not going to play,” he said. “I am.”
It didn't sound good, but there wasn't any alternative. Junko hadn't swallowed in half a minute.
“He's a cop,” Muhammad said from behind me.
“Yeah,” the hardcase said, “and I'm Cary Grant, you dumb immigrant. After you, jerkoff.”
“You do anything to her,” I said to the fat man, “and I'll come back for you.”
“Careful,” the hardcase said. “You might make his hand shake.” The fat man let loose an explosive chuckle, and one of Junko's hands flew up in a gesture of pure desperation. I headed for the pinballs.
“Against the wall,” the hardcase said, “facing me. Right betwe
en the machines.”
I backed up until I felt a cold wall behind me and a pinball machine touching either hip. Even the most optimistic real-estate salesman couldn't have called it anything but a dead end. Cold sweat trickled its way down my sides.
“Hands behind your back,” he said, glancing toward the big window that fronted onto Hollywood Boulevard. I followed his gaze and saw his point. From the street, anyone curious or stupid enough to look in would see the fat man's leather-clad back, between them and Junko, Muhammad polishing glasses, the ice-cream pimp and his lady enjoying their Cokes, and a couple of old friends having a chat between the pinball machines. I put my hands behind my back, feeling the rough texture of the stucco.
He lowered the hand with the knife in it. “Hope you hang left,” he said. Then, very quickly, he stuck me through my jeans with the tip of the knife, just to the right of my fly. I felt a pinpoint of pain and my legs turned to water. “Move and you'll leave with her tongue in your pocket,” he said. “Let's try a little lower.” He stuck me again twice, jabbing the knife in and pulling it out so fast I could barely see it move.
“Three's the charm,” he said, grinning lopsidedly at me. His teeth were rotted and brown; too much cocaine leaches away the calcium. I wished briefly that I were his dental hygienist, going after his tartar with a jackhammer. He must have seen something in my face, because he said, “But four's for fun,” and he stuck me again, deeper this time. I had to fight to remain standing.
“What you're going to do now,” he said, “you're going to go away. And you're not going to come back. Are you?” He gave me another little jab, in the hip this time.
“No,” I said. “I'm gone.”
He backed away, folding the knife and slipping it into his pocket. “Then get the fuck out of here, chickenshit,” he said. He thought better of it. “No,” he said, smiling with the half of his mouth that moved, “hold on.”
With a little grunt, he dug deeper into the pockets of his jeans and came out with something that looked like an aqualung for a skin diver from Lilliput, a flat black tanklike affair with a nozzle at the end of it. The whole thing couldn't have been more than five inches long. Well, the anopheles mosquito is even smaller than that.
He did something to the end and a needlelike blue flame flicked its tongue at me. He brought it up under my nose.
“Ever do any welding?” he asked. He was having fun.
“No.” The heat of the flame pricked against my upper lip.
“You ever want to, this'll do the job.” He held it a little closer to my face, and I let out an involuntary moan.
“Knock it off,” advised the fat man. “Or else hold it lower. People can see.”
“Skin melts,” the knife pimp said. “Next time you're back, we'll melt some. Understand?”
I nodded.
He gave me the half-grin again and lowered the flame. “Scram, pussy,” he said.
I passed him as widely as possible, feeling like the Guitar Player being tossed out of the Oki-Burger. When I passed the fat man, he nodded at me, and I said, “You can put the knife away.” I sounded shaky even to me.
“When you're all the way out,” he said.
Muhammad was assiduously stacking cups and saucers as I passed the counter. Neon was blinking on up and down the Boulevard. When I reached the door the fat man stepped to one side and Junko sagged forward, all the way to the table.
“Listen, you guys,” I said with the little bravado I could muster, “I'll see you.”
The hardcase snickered. “Come back,” he said. “We'll have a tongue sandwich.” He got a laugh.
I'd been sitting in Alice for at least five minutes, bleeding through my jeans and waiting for my legs to stop shaking, before I heard again what he'd said to Junko when she'd started to answer my question about Aimee. It hadn't been “Sshh,” as in “Be quiet.” It had been “Tssss,” as in a cigarette being put out in a bucket of water. Or a cigar in someone's navel.
7
The Red Dog
I was half-drunk and more than halfway to disorderly when Hammond and his friend walked into the Red Dog. I'd gone straight to the bathroom, tugged down my pants, and looked at the punctures, little purple-black slits that were already ringed with an angry red. Then I'd scrubbed the blood off my jeans with water and handfuls of paper towels and emerged into the bar looking like someone who couldn't hit the urinal even if the wind were right. I felt spent, incontinent, inadequate, and stupid.
I'd taken most of it out on Peppi, the aggressively lesbian barmaid, hassling her nastily about the quality of the whiskey she was foisting on me. I'd spent the rest of it on scorn for the burned-out cops in the bar who were trying to attain a level of intoxication at which they could shake off the fear and frustration of the day and kid themselves into thinking they were having a good time. Cop groupies, a scary bunch as a whole, were trying to help. I scorned them too. They didn't seem to notice. Scratchy sixties rock-and-roll screeched from the speakers. The Red Dog was a cop bar, and no compact discs were allowed.
Hammond, as usual, was heard before he was seen. I'd run out of scorn and I was gazing morosely at my drink, trying to remember why ice floated, when the patented Hammond Sonic Boom cut through the Buckinghams singing “Kind of a Drag.” “Peppi,” he bellowed, “upgrade that asshole and bring us a couple more. It's on him.” He pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down, smiling around the room at no one in particular. “Jerks,” he said through the smile. “No one above lieutenant. Sit down, Max.”
The man who sat down was a slender little dandy with fine sandy-blond hair, blue eyes, a harpist's spidery hands, an air of permanent melancholy, a very good suit, and an impossibly long, droopy nose. He looked everywhere but at me as he sat, and he dusted the chair before he sank into it. More than anyone else, he reminded me of Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes in GonewiththeWind. He had the same air of overbred aristocratic uselessness. “Max Bruner,” Hammond said, looking for Peppi. “Simeon Grist.”
Peppi pulled my drink off the table with ill-concealed displeasure and put a new one down in front of me before serving doubles to Hammond and Bruner. When she plunked down Bruner's drink he pushed it toward Hammond with one hand and took Peppi's sleeve with the other. It looked casual except that it was so fast. He hadn't looked at either of them.
“Soda,” he said quietly. “No ice.” She strode back to the bar in her seven-league boots and her incongruous black mesh stockings. Peppi made black mesh look like chicken wire.
“Simeon here wants to know about the kids,” Hammond said, putting the top half of his drink into the past tense. He burped and looked at Bruner expectantly.
Bruner turned flat blue eyes to me. “What's his interest?” he asked softly. So softly, in fact, that I wasn't sure I'd heard him right until Hammond said, “Interest? What do you mean, what's his interest? For Chrissakes, Max, he saw the kid with the belly-button.” Bruner continued to gaze at him. “Which, by the way,” Hammond said, “was earlier. Earlier than the broken neck, I mean. Scar was maybe a week old.”
“He's not a cop,” Bruner said without looking at me. His long thin nose drooped and twitched as he talked. I couldn't take my eyes off it. Hammond cleared his throat explosively and I realized I was staring. Peppi materialized and put a glass of plain bubbly soda in front of Bruner.
“I'm looking for a little girl,” I said. When Bruner figured out that I was through, he took a metallic-foil packet out of the pocket of his immaculately tailored jacket, peeled it back to free a couple of Maalox tablets, and chewed them like they were potato chips.
“That's what I said,” he said in the same quiet voice. “You're not a cop.”
“A1,” I said, “I've had enough today without the Scarlet Pimpernel here. What's with the gorgeous suit, anyway? Working undercover at Bijan?”
Hammond threw back a pound of peanuts. “Shut up, Simeon,” he said, “and, Max, if you don't mind my saying so, you shouldn't get all twisted. With your stomach you
got to be careful. I'm telling you, he's okay. Simeon helped me out when they sent me to records.”
“Is that so?” Bruner said neutrally.
“Max has been in records too,” Hammond confided. “He was taken off the street for trying to put a pimp's finger into the fan belt of his squad car.”
I thought about engines. “The fan belt?” I asked. “Didn't the fan get in the way?”
Bruner sat back, distancing himself from the conversation. “Yes,” he said. “It did.”
“If it hadn't, he might not have wound up in records,” Hammond said. “By the time they found the asshole's fingertip they'd developed a bad case of witnesses. And then the eleven-year-old veal chop on the pimp's string decided to side with the pimp.”
“Why’d she do that?” I asked.
“He,” Bruner said.
A pall descended on the table. “Oh,” I said. Bruner took a sip of soda, his eyes on the middle distance. I found myself warming to him. “Why a finger?” I asked, just to fill the silence.
“He'd done something with it I couldn't condone,” Bruner said softly. Hammond's big heavy shoe caught me on the shin, telling me to change the subject. “Max got out of records,” Hammond said, “but the doilies in charge wouldn't put him back on the street. Gave him a desk job in the underage vice task force.”
“She's thirteen,” I said. “From Kansas City. Gone about six weeks. Showed up briefly at the Oki-Burger.” Bruner's blue eyes ignited briefly like a gas flame and then subsided. “She isn't there anymore.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I've been sitting there for the last week.”
“How’d you like it?” he asked.
“I preferred it to rectal cancer,” I said, “but just barely.”
He nodded about a sixteenth of an inch, the biggest reaction I'd provoked yet. “Is she pretty?”
I gave him one of the yearbook pictures. He looked at it and sighed. He sighed periodically. It added to his air of melancholy. “Too pretty,” he said. “Haven't seen her, though.”
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