by A. W. Hill
In the daylight, he might have lingered awhile to hear whatever tales the place could tell, but Raszer was not immune to being spooked, and decided that he needed to be home at his bar with a glass of good, dry Portuguese red and a fire in the hearth. Still, he remained just a little longer because this was the point of departure, not only for Katy Endicott and the souls of her ill-chosen friends, but for him as well.
A hundred yards off to the northeast, up a narrow and badly rutted service road, were the “buggy sheds” that the old prospector had mentioned.
Raszer would very much have liked to save the sheds for another day. He was clearly going to be spending a lot of time in Azusa, and poking some more around the local mountains might reveal something about the alliances and enemies Johnny Horn and Henry Lee had made during their reign. Furthermore, he felt cold and uneasy.
What would not let him retreat was his thirst to find out if his chance detour into the Follows Camp and the appearance out of the fog of a yellow-bearded prophet were the sort of augurs a man disregards at great cost. The old guy had advised him to check out the buggy sheds for a squatter named J.Z., and he’d seemed to know more than he let on. The day’s yield had been good so far. Why not gamble another round?
With gravity and fear dragging on his heels, Raszer trudged up the service road.
The first of the formerly red-painted sheds was an automotive tool shop, with everything from ancient fan belts to leather steering wheels in a state of desiccated preservation. Up on blocks and left to die was the chassis of a very old Ford, as old, Raszer guessed, as the structure that housed it. There was no evidence that anyone had adopted the place as a home. It smelled only of old grease.
In the second shed, he found another automobile carcass, as well as a genuine buggy, its luggage trough littered with what appeared to be the pieces of a disassembled still.
But again, no J.Z.
The third building was set apart from the others and had the slightly more residential look of a caretaker’s shed. The door, peeling old paint the color of dried blood, was warped tight but unlocked, and when Raszer finally succeeded in forcing it open, the outrush of feral odor knocked him back, affirming he’d hit pay dirt. He stepped in, propping the door open with a brick, and flicked on his flashlight.
It wasn’t the smell of death, animal or human. He’d have recognized that and felt another kind of uneasiness. This was the organic odor of a living presence, the smell of armies of bacteria camped on unwashed flesh, and that brought a different discomfort, because he was therefore invading someone’s home. He swept the beam around and saw that there was an old stove, long unused, a chest of drawers, and, in the far corner behind a wall of fruit crates, a man-size nest of dried grasses partly covered by an oil-stained army blanket.
“Hello?” he called out.
Nothing.
“J.Z.?” Still nothing. Confident that he was alone for the moment, Raszer crept warily over to the makeshift bed. He picked up a corner of the blanket and dropped it immediately. The smell was overpowering, and there seemed to be nothing else here. He moved on to the chest.
The drawers were empty. Not so much as a moldy sock. J.Z., Raszer guessed, wore every article of clothing he owned. But laid across the top of the chest was a discolored lace table runner, quite possibly from the Coronado’s original linen closet. Placed with an almost fetishistic neatness on the cloth were a variety of small found treasures, things that a child or a magpie might collect: a comb, a key, a shard of mirror glass, assorted junk jewelry, and an assortment of coins. Some of the coins were new, some at least as old as the Coronado; all but one were from American mints, and that one exception drew Raszer’s eye, because the words on the coin were in Arabic.
He held the flashlight close. It was about the size of a half-dollar and hexagonal in shape, though its sharp angles were worn soft. The barely recognizable face of a woman was on the head. Raszer had seen pictures of its kind in studies of the medieval Levant. It appeared to be some kind of dirham of ancient mintage. The date contained three numerals, of which only the first—a 5—was legible, followed by the Arabic letters ah, putting it in the eleventh century ad, based on the Muslim calendar.
Moreover, it had been somebody’s lucky coin. A tiny hole was drilled near its top edge, big enough to pass a chain or a string through, and its dead center was cratered—nearly pierced—by what must have been a meteoric impact. Whoever had been fortunate enough to wear this charm around his neck had stopped a bullet.
The walls of the shed trembled, and Raszer stepped back into a semicrouch. The wind was coming down fiercely. It could have been that. For a moment, there was only the scraping of branches on the roof, but then he heard a snort, followed by shallow, wheezy breath. Whatever it was stood directly opposite him, on the other side of the thin wall. Raszer glanced at the open door and considered a dash into the open.
“J.Z.?” he called out again, almost hopefully.
There was a quarter-size knothole in the wall. The wind was whistling through it. Raszer leaned in gingerly, keeping one hand on the dresser for balance, and brought his eye to the hole. He blinked and froze.
A jaundiced, bloodshot eye blinked back at him.
A surge of adrenaline hit all his limbs at once. He moved back, turned, and made straight for the door with deliberate speed. No sooner had he crossed the threshold than his inner ear registered a sickening ccrraack and the oceanic rush of blood to his brain.
The last thing he saw before consciousness fizzled out was the wine glass waiting on his bar. It would keep waiting.
“Fuck,” he groaned, and hit the cold, wet ground.
SEVEN
Raszer kicked and pawed within his unconscious mind, like a man trying to break out of a bag. Sentience began to seep back in, and with it, profound discomfort. Wet, cold, pain, and an almost supernaturally foul odor. Short-term memory returned very slowly, but he was aware of a ringing at the base of his skull that was both the echo of the blow he’d suffered and the lingering effect of Hildegarde’s tea, which contained trace elements of ayahuasca, a harmine hallucinogen derived from a rainforest vine. The microdose in the brew, combined with other roots and herbs, was just enough to sharpen his perceptions appreciably, but that included the perception of pain.
His struggle had its root in the waking world. He opened his eyes to see his left ankle—the site of a years-old sprain that sometimes still caused him to limp—bound and tied to a railroad stake that had been hammered deep in the ground. His hands were free, but there was nothing to grab but fistfuls of mud. He felt the urge to retch. Along with the noxious odor came the smell of gasoline.
A small fire of damp kindling smoked and sizzled on his left, and arranged around the fire were not only his wallet, pocketknife, and flashlight, but the trophies of his day’s good hunting: the DJ’s business card and, most disturbingly, the embroidered velvet sack. The sonofabitch had broken into his car. Only now did Raszer regain consciousness fully enough to regard his captor, who sat cross-legged and humming gutturally while rocking a two-gallon can of gasoline on his lap, like some mutant infant. At his side was the two-by-four he’d used to knock Raszer cold.
J.Z.—for presumably this was the giant whose beanstalk castle Raszer had trespassed upon—did not at first seem to notice Raszer’s glare. He was the apotheosis of every homeless man who’d ever haunted a kid’s nightmares, and he smelled like a herd of goats in rut. He looked at first to be a sizable man, but that might only have been the mound of clothing he wore, added to with each new discovery of someone’s lost sweater or windbreaker. Underneath it all, there might be a frame wasted to nothing but will. He was a white man, but his face was black as tarnish on silver. There was so much organic material on him that he appeared to grow right out of the soil.
The tuneless humming, which came straight from J.Z.’s larynx to his cracked, parted lips, did not encourage Raszer to feel that he was the captive of a rational man, but it did take the edge off his
visual ferociousness. If it gave J.Z. a childlike aspect, however, it wasn’t innocence; he seemed to know exactly what he was doing. As he became aware of Raszer’s glance, the hum caught in his throat, and he stared back with slit yellow eyes that, in reflecting the sporadic licks of flame, were almost lupine.
Raszer slowly sat up, keeping his hands still.
“J.Z.?” he inquired.
“Ay-ah,” the man said, his lips moving only enough to distinguish the simple phonemes. It was the way people spoke with the most excruciating of toothaches.
“An old friend of yours . . . ” Raszer winced and squeezed his eyes shut as a bolt of pain arced over the top of his skull. “ . . . The old fellow at the Follows Camp . . . told me to look you up. My name is Raszer. I’m a private investigator, but maybe you know that from my wallet. I’m looking for a girl who was kidnapped here over a year ago.”
“Wray-ah,” J.Z. repeated, for it was indeed Raszer’s name he had tried to articulate. The R had been throated almost in the French way.
Raszer lifted his foot from the ground and shook the rope, then winced again. The ankle was inflamed. “Why . . . did you tie me up?”
The encrusted smile line at the left corner of J.Z.’s mouth creased just slightly. He spanked one rag-bandaged index finger against the other in the naughty-boy sign language we all learn as children. His hands were wrapped tightly with strips of what might once have been white sheets. Only the blackened fingertips were visible.
“Because I was in your house,” said Raszer. “I’m sorry about that. I’m a snoop. A prospector, like you. But I didn’t take anything.” He glanced down at the items laid beside the fire. “I guess you can see that.” Finally, Raszer felt secure enough to use his hands, and pointed at J.Z.’s booty. “Those are my things. May I have them back?”
The old squatter made a snarling sound and shook the gasoline can menacingly. A few drops fell on MC Hakim’s business card. “Ma-hing-ow,” he growled.
“Your things now . . . ” Raszer repeated. “Well, maybe by the law of thieves. But your friend told me you were an honorable man—that you might be able to tell me something about that night. When the kids came. When the black Lincoln came.”
The fire popped and flared. As if ricocheting, a twig snapped in the woods, and the old man started. His mouth dropped open, his bushy chin reflexively working up and down like a marionette’s. At once, Raszer saw the reason for his stunted speech.
Only half a tongue remained in the squatter’s mouth, and the stump had been badly self-stitched with what looked like coarse twine, loose ends hanging limply. Even a fleeting glimpse told Raszer that it was badly infected, probably beyond painful.
“Jesus, old fella,” said Raszer, in as even a tone as he could muster. “You ought to let a doctor look at that.”
J.Z. shut his trap tightly and kept staring off into the woods. His expression was both wounded and frightened.
Raszer scooted himself as close to the fire as he dared. He sensed that with the slightest provocation, the gasoline can would be upended and the whole trove would go up in flames. “Who did that to you?” he asked gently. “Was it the men who came to take the girl? The men in the black car?”
The squatter gave his head a sideways jerk, ostensibly a no. Then Raszer saw that in doing so, J.Z. had shifted his line of sight and was now glaring from beneath heavy, hooded brows in the general direction of the fluttering yellow police tape.
“Over there’s where they took her, right?” said Raszer. “And killed those boys. Were you here that night?”
With a touch of silent-movie melodramatics, the hermit pivoted his head like a gun turret and aimed his phosphorescent eyes at Raszer, who suddenly realized that J.Z. had not yet decided whether he was friend or foe. Because the squatter was generically human, because he possessed the faculty of understanding, Raszer had made the mistake of assuming a kinship. But J.Z. was not kin. He was a wounded animal just self-reflective enough to be both paranoid and willful, and he was not holding a gasoline can for show. He was a man who had survived this long only through the cruelest kind of barter. Evidently, he had bartered his tongue for his life.
Now, the stock in trade was Raszer’s life for his belongings.
He lifted the can slowly and doused the items with gas, then picked up the first of them—the little high-tech flashlight—and held it over the fire.
“What is it you want, J.Z.?” Raszer asked.
The squatter’s upper lip curled, as close to a grin as he could manage.
“You can have it,” Raszer said, indicating the flashlight. “It’s yours.”
J.Z. pocketed the light. Raszer knew instantly he’d given it up too easily, and when the squatter next took the penknife in hand, he protested: “No. I bought that in Amsterdam. That’s pearl inlay and solid-gold hardware. Worth at least $200.”
Getting into his game, J.Z. held the knife close enough to the fire to raise a lick when the gasoline vaporized. He lowered it another inch before Raszer bid.
“All right, partner,” he said. “It’s yours.” He pointed to the DJ’s business card. “In exchange for that little piece of cardboard. There are three boys dead, a young girl missing, and it looks to me like you’ve lost the better part of your tongue. The number on that card may help me find the men responsible. What’ve you got to lose?”
J.Z. mulled it over, suspecting a trick. At his age, in his mental state, he probably suspected life of being a trick. After weighing the trade, the old man slipped the knife into his boot, then picked up the gasoline-soaked card and handed it to Raszer.
“Errhh,” he said, and his breath stank like chèvre left in the August sun.
J.Z. had an uncanny sense of value, or perhaps he’d peeked, because he saved the velvet sack for last. With surprising dexterity for a man whose fingers were practically mummified, he untied the drawstring. J.Z.’s own bouquet easily overpowered the exotic scent. He set the sack in his palm, and made to empty its contents into the fire.
“Okay, you old bastard—”
J.Z. cackled and tipped the sack further. His jackal eyes flashed.
“Once a gold-digger, always a gold-digger,” said Raszer, his heart in his throat. Whaddaya want for that bag and what’s in it?”
The squatter’s lips parted in anticipated relish. If he’d had a tongue, he would have licked them. He curled his fingers around the neck of the velvet sack and drew it close to his breast. In unmistakable semaphore, and with an almost dapper air, he uncurled one finger to point at Raszer’s torso, then yanked his own frayed and filthy lapels, and finally aimed the finger squarely at Raszer’s coat.
“Oh, no,” said Raszer, broadly waving off the proposal. “Notmy duster. It’s vintage. Passed down four generations. You’d have to kill me first.”
Raszer’s claim was not entirely fallacious, but J.Z. sniffed out the overripeness and dangled the velvet sack over the fire, lightly holding the gold cord between the tips of his thumb and forefinger. He let it twist there, flames singing its royal blue velvet to brown, slow roasting whatever was inside.
“Shit,” said Raszer, angrily peeling off the garment. “You’re better at liar’s poker than I am. Give me the sack and my wallet, and you can have my fucking coat.”
J.Z. started humming again. Stupidly, Raszer made a grab for the sack, but with his free hand, the old man scooped up his two-by-four club and brandished it while wagging his mutilated tongue from side to side. The sight of it, the stench, and the throbbing in his head made Raszer want to vomit.
“Or,” he said, “you can smash my skull in, old man. But then you’d be a murderer, and you’d have to deal with detective Luis Aquino of the Azusa police, who knows where I am and is expecting me at six o’clock.”
It was an empty threat, and Raszer suspected the squatter knew it. By the time the police arrived, he could have dumped Raszer’s body in any number of culverts or stream beds known only to him, and by dawn, the coyotes would have finished him off.
>
J.Z. withdrew the sack from the fire and set it on the wet ground, where it steamed and sizzled softly. He tossed Raszer his wallet, then held out his hand for the coat, twitching his fingers in a gimme gesture. Raszer fished his keys from the garment’s deep pocket and held it to his chest.
“I want one more thing, J.Z.,” he said with a smile.
The squatter growled and narrowed his eyes.
“I want that old coin you’ve got on your bureau,” said Raszer. “The five-sided one with the hole in it. Tell you what: You leave me tied up while you go inside, and to be sure I don’t untie myself and make a run for it, you take my car keys as security.”
He slipped his finger through the key ring and held the keys out at arm’s length. J.Z. rose to a squat, farted, and spat into the fire. Then he snatched the keys and lumbered off, as only an old man wearing forty pounds of wet, filthy, ill-fitting clothing can lumber. In less than thirty seconds, he was back with the coin and they made the trade.