“We can make a deal,” I said, wondering wildly what it might be.
“You already made one, Jack,” Mrs. Brussels said, “and you won't like it.” Her free arm encircled Aimee's throat. Aimee's eyes opened and rolled toward the ceiling. She was gone again.
“You're going to go down the stairs,” Mrs. Brussels said with difficulty. “Backward. Aimee and I will follow you.” With the gun hand she pressed against the massive blister on her face and winced at the pain. The gun remained pointed at me. “Do it right, and we'll see what happens.”
All I wanted was the gun I'd lost. Or Bruner's gun. Or fucking anybody's gun. “And if I do it wrong?” I asked.
“First, she dies,” Mrs. Brussels said, meaning Aimee. “Then, you. And then, little Jewel, when I find her. And I’ll find her.”
I put my hands helplessly into the air. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
“Don't turn your back,” Mrs. Brussels said thickly. When she talked, the fluid in the giant blister bobbed up and down. “Keep your hands up there, and back up. Back around us. Back out of the room.”
I did as she said, bumping against the door. Mrs. Brussels made a catching sound in her throat and pushed the gun toward me. I eased myself around through the doorway. She followed me into the main office, trundling Aimee in front of her. The stench of diesel fuel was very strong, and so was the smoke. Bruner was still burning.
“This place is going to blow up, you know,” I said, backing toward the door that led to the circular stairway, my hands still in the air.
“No shit,” Mrs. Brussels said, “and you're going to be in it. Just like Max planned.” Her arm was tight around Aimee's throat as she forced the little girl forward.
“What about the kids?” I said. I'd backed through the door and my foot had hit the first stair.
“The livestock? They'll be with me. There are other states, you bugger. California's played out anyway.” She was suffering exquisite pain and her world was crumbling beneath her feet, but she had a contingency plan. She had the concentrated focus of the truly desperate. She sighted over Aimee's head and trained the gun directly at my forehead. Her hand was as steady as Gibraltar. The only thing that mattered to her was getting down the stairs, and she was going to do it no matter whom she had to kill. I was beginning to realize why Birdie and Marco had been so afraid of her.
From below I heard whimpering: the children. Petroleum fumes rolled up at me. I was forced down two more steps.
“Kansas City,” I said experimentally.
“Keep going,” Mrs. Brussels said. “Shut up and keep going.” There was no reaction from Aimee. Her life had deserted her. I went down some steps, but I was too fuddled to count.
“Aurora,” I said, “the harbinger of dawn. Remember Aurora?” I stumbled and turned my ankle on the next step. Pain shot up my leg and I had to clutch the rail to keep from falling.
Aimee was an automaton. Her eyes were three-quarters closed, like some bogus East Indian mystic meditating on a profitable future life. She moved in perfect consort with Mrs. Brussels, a little girl who had learned long ago to let her partner lead.
“Just roll,” Mrs. Brussels said. “Keep going, and maybe I won't put Jewel up for auction. You haven't seen an auction, have you?”
We were most of the way down the stairway. “What about Prince Arthur?” I asked, dealing what I figured was my last card. Aimee's eyes flickered.
“I've told you to shut up,” Mrs. Brussels said. “I could shoot you here and step over you. I don't even have to worry about my nylons.”
“You can frighten me,” I said doggedly, waiting for the gun to blow a hole through my skull, “but you can't frighten a little girl who's worn a pig suit.” The gun came up toward my forehead. Her hand wasn't shaking. “A bright pink pig suit,” I said, closing my eyes. “Everything but the squeal.”
There was a sharp noise that might have been a bullet snapping into place, and my eyes jerked uncontrollably open.
Aimee was staring up at me through suddenly lucid eyes, and as the muscles in Mrs. Brussels' forearm contracted to pull the trigger, Aimee reached up and knocked her hand aside. The gun boomed, and Mrs. Brussels cursed, and Aimee wrapped both hands around the arm circling her neck and went limp.
Mrs. Brussels flailed at the railing, trying to keep her balance as Aimee's deadweight pulled her forward, and she hit the railing with the gun. The gun flew from her hand and even before the two of them collapsed on top of me I heard the gun clatter and skitter on the concrete floor below. Then Aimee and Mrs. Brussels hurtled down on me, and I fell backward down the stairs, trying instinctively to turn and save myself, but something went very wrong with my left knee and I skidded down the circular stairs on my nose and chest in a tangled ball of arms and legs, Aimee screaming and Mrs. Brussels swearing, all of us enveloped by the smell of fuel from Mrs. Brussels' clothes.
We hit the floor in a sandwich: me on the bottom, Aimee in the middle, and Mrs. Brussels on top. My head slammed against the concrete and I was trying to get my eyes to focus as the weight on top of me lessened. Mrs. Brussels was crawling on her belly away from me, scrabbling toward the gun.
I attempted to roll onto my side to go after her, but Aimee was still on top of me, and my knee sent an urgent signal of pain straight to my brain. I did my best to get Aimee off me gently as Mrs. Brussels squirmed toward the pistol, and then Aimee began again to emit the shrill flat sound, and it was echoed from the corners of the warehouse.
First there was one siren, then another, human sirens produced from small, tight throats, and then there were three and then four, and then too many to count. And Aimee pushed herself off my chest and got to her feet. Like a robot she walked slowly after Mrs. Brussels, still shrilling, hands hanging loose at her sides, and then I saw Marie, and behind Marie two of the other girls, and then the other children, all closing in on Mrs. Brussels, all with their mouths hanging loose and all tearing the air with the same inhuman sound.
Mrs. Brussels shouted a hoarse command, but the children kept coming. Her hand was only inches from the gun. I tried to roll onto my hands and knees but the pain overwhelmed me and the last thing I saw before I gave up and let the darkness take over was Mrs. Brussels, flat on her back and taking hopeless swipes at the children, trying to knock aside the sharp little fingers converging on her eyes.
31
Dust to Dust
The Mountain's funeral took place on the first sunny day in weeks.
It was surprising because of the size of the turnout, the width of the grave, and the presence of Donnie in the company of a large woman who wore bright orange hair and half an inch of makeup, makeup thicker than the average circus clown's. From the way he looked at her, she had to be his mother.
Two enormously fat people, the Mountain's parents, stood next to the minister. Tommy stood in the place of second honor, on the other side of the minister. He and the Mountain's mother were weeping freely. The Mountain's father was dry-eyed, staring stolidly at the horizon. He wore a dark suit, buttoned over a plaid shirt of the type the Mountain had favored. The Mountain had worn his father's old shirts.
The minister seemed to be at something of a loss as he surveyed the crowd. I didn't blame him.
Other than Jessica, Morris, and Hammond, who'd insisted on coming as a kind of penance for Bruner, the crowd was largely made up of Oki-Burger regulars. The Young Old Woman and the Toothless Man clung to each other in the presence of death, probably the only remaining item on their once-long list of fears. Tammy and Velveeta were decked out in full Hollywood mourning. Velveeta had even found a black feather boa, while Tammy had to settle for a black leather motorcycle jacket and a miniskirt to match. They were wearing almost as much makeup as Donnie’s mother, and it was running copiously, creating long black streaks down their cheeks.
Hammond stomped out his cigar as a gesture of respect as the minister began to speak. The minister obviously hadn't known the Mountain. He did some spiritual boilerplate ab
out the tragedy of a young life cut short, but the only time he caught the crowd's attention was when he revealed the Mountain's real name, something no one but his parents had known. At some point in his life, the Mountain had thought of himself as William Edward Dinwiddie the Third.
William Edward Dinwiddie the Second stared at the dead grass in front of him as his wife clung to his arm, her oversize frame shaken by sobs. Only Tammy and Velveeta cried louder.
But then it was Tommy's turn to speak.
“He did what he hadda do,” Tommy said in a combination of Okinawan English and pure, deep grief. “He sent da kids home. He was a big fat guy, but he sent da fuckin’ kids home.” The minister blinked. “Nobody else done it. Lotta times I hadda take care of da tables because he was workin’ da pay phone, gettin’ da kids home.” Tears rolled down his cheeks. “There's kids all over da place, they'd be dead if da Mountain hadn't sent them home.” He stepped back, squeezing his eyes into fierce little slits. Salt water dripped from his chin.
The minister mumbled the appropriate concluding mumbo jumbo and backed away as the Mountain's mother threw a handful of dirt into the grave. Then she collapsed against her husband, slipping an arm inside his suit jacket, against his plaid shirt. He looked down at the arm as though it were an anaconda curled around his middle, and the crowd started to disperse. Some of them were chattering, working on first-draft gossip that they'd refine and share later with those who hadn't been there.
There wasn't much left to do: Aimee was home and undergoing therapy in Kansas City. The Cap'n's restaurants had been closed down. Mrs. Brussels was in a jail hospital, burned and blind, and the other kids were in Juvenile Hall, waiting for someone to turn up to claim them. So far, according to Hammond, only two had been claimed.
“Your son was a hero,” I said to the Mountain's parents as the others turned their backs on the grave. Two guys with shovels were filling it up on union time, disgruntled because the service hadn't lasted longer. If it had, they might have gotten time-and-a-half.
“He was a big fat dope,” William Edward Dinwiddie the Second said. “My whole life. My whole life I worked so he could go to college.” Despite her formidable bulk, Mrs. Dinwiddie seemed cowed by the fierceness in her husband's voice. “So what was he? A fucking two-bit waiter.”
It had never occurred to me to wonder why the Mountain had hit the streets. Now I knew.
“With all due respect to your loss,” I said, “you're an asshole.”
He called something hoarse and obscene after me as I turned away from them and caught up with Tommy. Jessica, Morris, and Hammond followed.
“I've got some money,” I said to Tommy. Aimee's mother had sent me a bonus of five thousand dollars. I'd cashed the check, deposited half, and had the other half in my pocket.
“So?” Tommy said, wheeling on me. He was ashamed that we'd seen him crying.
“So here's twenty-five hundred bucks,” I said, pressing the roll of bills into his hand. “Use it to hire someone who does what the Mountain did.”
Tommy curled his hand around the wad of hundreds and then opened it again. He pressed the bills back into my hand.
“Already did,” he said. “Whassa matter, you don't think I know what's important or something?” He sounded indignant.
“I don't mean to clear tables. I mean to send the kids home.”
He glared at me as though I were subhuman. “So do I,” he said. Then he turned his back to me and stalked off toward a waiting car.
In front of me, Donnie and his mother were heading toward their car. She was hanging back, complaining that she didn't know why she'd been brought all this way to attend the funeral of someone she'd never met. Donnie kept darting ahead of her. He was restraining his impulse to run. The next time he really ran, I was wondering, who would catch him?
“For Chrissakes, hold on,” Hammond grumbled behind me, and I realized that I'd increased my pace, limping on my bad knee to keep up with Donnie. Hammond was following, pissed off and shamefaced and sucking on a new cigar. Behind him were Jessica and Morris.
They had their backs to the grave and they were holding hands.
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Everything but the Squeal sg-2 Page 33