The Jook

by Gary Phillips

  Wilma put on her lawyer face. She walked in small circles as she talked. "It doesn't seem likely Weems would send these two to hide out and wait around for Stadanko and the rest to get here this weekend." She had one hand on her hip, the gun loose at her side in the other.

  "Maybe they came here to look for the files like us."

  "That's more delicate work than I'd send Trace to do."

  "That why you didn't want me and Nap doing it?"

  She came over to me, touching my wound. "Now, baby."

  Trace made a move and I hit him with the business end of the shovel. The bastard hit the deck, his hands out before him. I kicked him in the side and this time he felt it. He held his ribs.

  "Your day is fast approaching, defiler."

  Wilma pointed the gun at him. Much as I didn't like the asshole, killing somebody like that made me jumpy. I guess it shouldn't have, but it did. "You're gonna dust him? That's two goddamn bodies we gotta deal with, Wilma."

  "This is so he'll behave." She jerked the gun. "Give him the shovel."

  "Are you"

  "Please, baby," she said sweetly, "I know what I'm doing."

  I didn't dig it that I wasn't in control, didn't know the rules for this kind of play Wilma did, or at least that gun and what she did with it made it seem so. I threw the shovel over to Trace. He was on his feet again, rubbing his ribs, sizing me up for another rumble.

  "You're going to bury your friend." Wilma got an angle on him for a good, clean shot.

  He touched his flaming cross. "I will not."

  Wilma shot past his head, the bullet sinking into the wall of the shed in a puff of plaster.

  Me and Trace stood there with our mouths open. She didn't say anything else and Trace picked up the shovel. We walked over to the area behind the shed where there were Joshua trees and cactus and other shit I couldn't name. We stopped at a patch of earth and Wilma pointed at the ground. Trace got a funny look on his face and I tensed. But he got busy digging.

  He didn't talk, didn't take off his coat. He kept working, stopping now and then to get his breath. Eventually he'd dug a hole big enough for Randy. The space wasn't too long but was deep.

  "Put down the shovel and let's get your boyfriend."

  "You will be punished." He was breathing heavy, sweat pouring off him like buckets of water. His suit was dirty and wet.

  "No, that's not going to happen," Wilma said.

  Me and Trace carried Randy's corpse to its makeshift grave.

  "Zelmont, search the body just in case they found anything."

  I did. The only thing I found was a pocket edition of the New Testament and two pens. Then we dumped the body in the pit.

  The dead man was tall so his body didn't really fit lengthwise. He laid there, his knees bent like he was resting, his eyes open and focused on nothing. It gave me the goddamn willies.

  Again without a word, Trace got busy, filling the hole with the dirt he'd just dug out. When he was finished, he broke off two small branches from a Joshua tree. He fastened them together with his shoelaces to make a cross and stuck it over the place Randy's head was. He bowed his own head and mumbled a prayer. All the while I didn't take my eyes off him. I was waiting for him to try and get slick.

  "And now, Mary Magdalene?" he said.

  She came up on him, the gun level. Trace was gonna get to see Jesus faster than he might want to, his cap pealed in the bargain. Wilma then patted him down thoroughly and looked like she was enjoying it. Trace acted like he wasn't. "Now get in the car you came in and go back to Los Angeles. Tell Weems what happened, don't spare the details, you hear?"

  Trace finally took off his coat. He put it over his arm and went off, walking directly through the bushes and all.

  "Uh, what the fuck are you doing?" I pointed after him.

  Wilma was walking toward the shed. "What can Weems do, Zelmont? He sent those two up here for something, but it's definitely off the books, right?" She tried the door of the shed but it was locked.

  "Yeah," I said, not really sure what she meant. I stepped up and leaned on the door.

  "We have to make it seem like we were never here," she said.

  "I know." The door caved in after a few knocks with my shoulder. It wasn't too busted up, so it would look pretty normal when we shut it back, I figured.

  Wilma went inside the room. Sunlight came in through the dirty windows. She found a switch and put on the light, "Weems is up to something," she said, sensing I was still confused about her sending Trace off like she did. "If he reports Randy's death, then he has to explain what those two were doing here. And he doesn't want that."

  After a few seconds, I said, "Stadanko can't call the law 'cause they're after him, and big-stick-up-his-ass Weems can't 'cause his slippery shit will come out."

  Wilma was looking around. "Exactly. Ironic, isn't it?"

  "Very"

  Inside the place was what you'd expect to find in a tool shed. There was a power drill, a rake, a push broom, and a big table with those little drawers built in to a long rack above it. A vise was lying on the table next to all kinds of parts. Standing there I felt kinda sad. It was like the workplace I'd always imagined my dad would have had when I was a kid. Like we'd be together in it while Moms cooked dinner, working on a model car. Or he'd be showing me how to fix a faucet family shit like that.

  "Damn," I said quietly.

  Wilma wasn't paying attention. She was looking around very carefully. If she picked something up she was sure to place it back just where it had been. I did the same.

  ''Wouldn't his records be in the house?" I opened a big roll-away toolbox. The thing was filled with shiny socket wrenches and all kinds of stuff. None of them look liked they'd ever been used.

  I know how his mind works, Zelmont. He thinks he's much more clever than he really is."

  I worked on trying to figure out what she meant as I searched around. We kept it up for an hour but didn't turn up zip.

  "We have to check the house," I said, leaving out "and then book." I didn't want Wilma to think I was scared, but hanging around in a house we broke into with a fresh corpse buried in the yard was not my idea of a good time.

  "I already checked it. There's a safe in the master bedroom. Weems must have given Trace the combination because its door was laying open. But they must not have found the files inside."

  "When'd you find that out?"

  "When I went to see how I might get in the house I saw that the alarm had been turned off. I knew something was up so I got out my Sig." She nodded her head at the gun, which was on a stool. I went through the house slowly. When I was in the master bedroom, I heard you going at it with the Hardy Boys."

  "So they came outside when they heard us coming up?"

  "Or," she snapped her fingers, "there was some reason for them to be searching outside."

  I followed her out and we stood there next to the shed. She had her hand up to block the glare of the sun as she scanned the area. "What would make them go outside?" she mumbled.

  "Maybe we can find what it is up in the bedroom."

  She winked at me and we walked into the cabin through the back door. Upstairs, Stadanko's bedroom was outfitted like I figured the big show-off would have it. There was a bearskin with the head on it on the floor. The bed looked like it had been handmade from logs. There were Indian-type rugs tacked on the raw wood walls. At the foot of the bed was a long black lacquer box about the size of two hope chests put one on top of another. Some kind of stereo unit, I figured. He even had deer horns tacked over the bathroom door. I cracked up. "This is some shit right out of Bonanza. Stadanko ain't never been hunting in his life."

  I was standing over the spot where the safe was sunk into the floor. The rug had been thrown back and a section of the floor removed, revealing it. Inside the safe were a lot of packets of greenbacks and some other stuff. I crouched down to help myself.

  "We're not here for that," Wilma said sharply. "You need to keep your mind focused."<
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  As broke as I was, I knew she was right. From where I was squatting I could see through the sliding glass door and the railing of the balcony. Beyond that was the plants, shrubs, and the shed. There was also an opening off to the right between a bunch of green. Trace probably had good eyesight like mine. I saw what he must have seen. Standing up, the gap in the plants and leaves wasn't that noticeable.

  "Come on."

  "What?"

  "Come on." I was already heading for the door. Back outside we went through the greenery in the direction I saw from upstairs. The bite Randy had given me had stopped hurting and it almost seemed like it happened a long time ago. Almost. We got to the place I'd been looking at.

  "What in the hell?" Wilma said.

  It was a pumpkin patch. The funny thing was, the area was surrounded by a high fence of barbed wire.

  "To keep out coyotes?" Wilma touched the fence.

  "It's damn near seven-feet high," I said. "That's a pretty big goddamn coyote to keep out." There was a gate in the fence, and it had a heavy lock on it. "I bet he would have put an alarm on except the rabbits and other animals around here would keep setting it off."

  She wrinkled up her face. "What are you getting at?"

  "I know a little something about Stadanko too." I walked around the outside of the patch. "See that pumpkin over there? Ain't there a crack going around the top?" I pointed to the one I meant.

  "I don't see anything."

  "I do." I went back and got the ladder from the shed. Then I leaned it on a tree near the patch. From the top of the ladder I dove over the fence into the patch, coming up in a roll. We couldn't cut the wire, as that would have tipped our hand to Stadanko.

  "How are you going to get back over?" Wilma stood by the barbed wire, a smart-ass look on her lips.

  "You'll see." I touched the pumpkin I'd been looking at. "It's plastic."

  "No shit," she said.

  I kicked at a few. "Most of these are real, though."

  I opened up the bogus pumpkin. Inside were some computer disks. Bingo. I took them out. "Won't he check on these when he has his meeting this weekend?" I asked.

  "We'll put some disks from the house in there. He has a computer and plenty of blanks in a box. He might look inside the pumpkin, but I'm betting he won't take them out to check them."

  That sounded right to me. I found more disks in two other fake pumpkins hidden with the real ones. She got some same-colored disks from the house and I stuck them in the pumpkins.

  "Now how are you going to get out?" Wilma put her hands on her hips, a little smile on her lips as she blew me a kiss. "You're so smart."

  "Take the ladder and turn it sideways between the barbed wire." I pointed to where I meant.

  She brought the ladder over and we got it jammed in place. That created enough room for me to ease through the opening.

  "Shit." The barbs had caught me as I went through the gap. A chunk of meat was ripped from my back. I fell to the ground, beat.

  We got the ladder back to the shed and Wilma took me inside again. She had me take off my shirt and told me to lay on Stadanko's bed. What the fuck. I did, and she dabbed at the wound with something on a washcloth she'd gotten from the bathroom. As she took care of me I was looking at this dresser off to the side. On it were a bunch of videotapes.

  "Stadanko's some kind of movie nut," I said.

  "Oh, he's a nut all right." Wilma got on the bed beside me. She grabbed a remote off the dresser and pressed a button. I heard something whine and turned to see a TV rising out of what I thought had been a stereo unit. She got one of the tapes and put it in a slot on top of the TV.

  On screen was a homemade video of some women spanking each other, giggling, and snorting coke. One of them was even doing another with a jet black strap-on dildo. Wilma was watching, fascinated. I was getting turned on knowing she was getting turned on. In one scene Chekka was running around naked in a cowboy hat chasing the chick with the dildo. I could hear Stadanko hollering at him in that language of theirs. Stadanko would put the video camera down now and then and join in.

  "This is what happens after they talk business," Wilma said. She unbuttoned her shirt, rubbing her own nipples.

  Pretty soon me and Wilma were getting busy on the bed, the partyers on the tape whooping and having a great time too. Sometime later, laying on my back staring at the ceiling, it crossed my mind to ask myself how it was she knew what was on the tapes. Was it just a guess, based on what she'd heard about Stadanko? Or was there some other reason?

  At some point, Wilma had put in another tape and it was playing as we laid on the bed. She had a leg over my lower body, and she was asleep. I shifted and looked at the action on the tape. This one involved some light S & M, with Stadanko getting his jollies by being spanked with a long flat paddle with holes in it. This big ice blonde was doing him. She was dressed in thigh-high boots, leather mini skirt, and a cap like I'd seen the German officers wearing in a Hogan's Heroes rerun. She was definitely enjoying her work, and so was Stadanko. The boy was almost crying he dug the pain so much.

  I laid back down, my eyes getting heavy too. The sounds on the tape were my lullaby "Faster, faster, goddammit," I suddenly heard a voice say. A voice I knew. I shot up, almost waking Wilma. On the TV, Davida was getting banged by Rudy Chekka. She was spread eagle on a couch, her arms and legs tied apart with thick white ropes. Rudy was working hard, sweating and grunting like the animal he was. It didn't help my mood that Davida was really digging it. The ice blonde stood on the side, whacking Chekka's butt with a whip. But she wasn't doing it too hard. I watched the whole goddamn tape, not tired anymore at all.

  Chapter 12

  The next day I had to move out of my crib. I'd been trying not to say anything about this, but Wilma and Nap had to have some way to contact me.

  "I didn't realize," Wilma had said on the drive back to L.A. the evening before.

  "I'll get it back 'fore it's sold. We got the information now, right?"

  She put her hand on my crotch, massaging me. "That's right, baby, everything's going to be ours now."

  So here I was watching the movers take my shit out of the pad. I had to get out from under that rock of a mortgage. To save dough I'd arranged to rent the place out for a couple of months while it was on the market to be sold.

  Most of my stuff was gonna have to go to storage 'cause there damn sure wasn't enough room to put it in the apartment in Lennox. Maybe I was being too cocky, but what better place to chill out before the job than Davida's old pad? I mean, it was empty and Fahrar would have to think twice to look for me there. Plus the landlady knew who I was and had given me a break on the move-in costs.

  I put my box of trophies in the rear, then closed the back of the Explorer. I fired up the SUV and started to drive off.

  On the way out, I passed Candy and Dandy, my demon statues. The men from the prop shop I'd sold them to were digging around the pair's feet, getting to the cement base they were bolted to. I sure was gonna miss those two. If I didn't get over on this job, I was gonna be fucked worse than a sissy in San Quentin.

  Wilma was out of town through the weekend dealing with the broadcast negotiations. Nap and his color consultant boyfriend Pablo were also getting away for a couple of days. As I got on the 101 heading south, I thought about giving Isabel a call later to see what she was up to. But I nixed that, knowing it wasn't a good idea to get too involved with her, what with Fahrar on my jock. Besides I knew I'd be pushing my luck with the job coming up. Where was my favorite asshole these days anyway? He'd been laying low, but that only meant he was waiting for me to slip. And now, especially now, I had to be careful. I couldn't let anything happen to blow the operation.

  The next few days I was nervous as a long-tailed cat on a porch full of busy rocking chairs. Every goddamn noise had me going like it was Trace and a couple of his holy-rolling buddies come to settle his debt with me. But that didn't happen. I supposed Wilma was right, but I still couldn't see Weems
' angle. Was his Jesus jive all a front? Was he as crooked as the rest of them? Shit. The waiting was eating me up.

  Then there was the apartment. I never really paid attention to how fucked up the area was. I mean, I wasn't blind or anything, I knew Lennox wasn't no Newport Beach. What dough she had she'd put into keeping up appearances with that car of hers.

  Most of the people who lived in the area were Mexicans or Latinos or whatever they call themselves these days. Some of 'em worked in the hotels near the airport, which weren't far away. They also slaved in other hotels in El Segundo and downtown, and restaurants too.

  The noise was the worst part. Every other goddamn minute it seemed like some jet or another was buzzing by above heading to Hawaii, Montana, Bofunk, Iowa, wherever. The windows would rattle, glasses dancing to the edge of the table. Jesus, how in the hell did she put up with this bullshit? I guess when I was over here I was either figuring what new way we could sex each other down or worn out after doing it, so the goddamn planes weren't big on my mind.

  I had to fight the urge to score some crack or coke. I wanted to be as sharp as a motherfuckin' tack when it was time, but I had to cut the edge. I drove back to the Canyon and worked myself as hard as I could. More than halfway up the mountain, my hip started aching like a mother and I had to stop. The fibula had a new twang in it I hadn't experienced before. The fight with Trace and Randy, and me showing off by leaping over that barbed wire fence, had done its job on me. I managed to limp to the top, sweat coming off me by the gallon.

  From that spot I looked over at my house, or what used to be my house. If things didn't go right there'd be another name on the title. I bent over, the palms of my hands pressed hard against my lower legs, then went back down the hill. Walking toward the drinking fountain I saw a beat-to-fuck Camry do a U-turn from the curb and head west on Fuller. Fahrar. I was wondering when he was going to show his dead eye again.

  The problem was not so much that he'd showed up again. I expected that. What bothered me was I hadn't noticed him. He was smart not to use his own boat 'cause that lame-ass Toronado was too easy to make. But I also had the feeling he wanted me to see him do his turn, wanted me to know he was still on me. I had to be more careful.