“Yeah, fuckin’ Arnold. He still doin’ bizness?”
“Far as I know.”
Jake leaned far back in his chair. Wood creaked. There was a look on his reddening face of grim anticipation. Tendons stood out on his neck. His mottled hands gripped the edge of the table. He leaned back a little farther. Marty tilted sideways until he could see under the table. Jake’s chair had risen up on its hind legs. Marty sat there, resigned. The old man’s eyes widened as he gave birth to the first of what Marty knew from past experience would be an endless string of farts. The noise he made, a high-pitched shriek, was like a spinnaker bursting under intolerable pressures. The air vibrated. Jake’s sunken eyes glittered.
He poured some more beer into his mug. The beer bottle’s long neck rattled against the curved rim of the glass. Jake drank some beer. He farted again, loud as a shotgun blast. Marty’s nostrils contracted involuntarily as Jake’s awful stench hit him square on the nose. It was as if he’d been dropped from a great height into the main holding pond of a primary sewage treatment plant. His stomach twisted. Jake squirmed in his chair, his wizened face darkening, contorting.
Butch had come into the room hoping for scraps. Her claws raked the carpet as, whining piteously, she turned and fled.
Marty flinched as Jake fired another high-velocity round. Jeez, if he’d been fighting for the Iraqis ...
Jake suddenly looked up. “So, Arnold. Da phone-meister. Look him up. Buy me a couple Motorolas. Two a dem.”
Marty nodded. To speak required breathing, and he did not care to breathe. He stood up, stepped away from the table.
Jake said, “Ya okay fo’ cash?”
Marty backed rapidly towards the stairs.
Jake frowned at him. “Ya okay?”
“Fine.”
“Don’t mind da stink of a old man’s wind?”
Marty said, “What stink?”
Jake thought that was hilarious. It cracked him up. For a moment it looked as if somebody had thrown a rock through his face. Marty descended the stairs with all possible speed, chased by Jake’s raucous, phlegmy laughter.
*
Marty took the Bentley. He revved the engine, put the enormous car in gear and mashed the gas pedal to the Scotchgarded pure-wool carpet. The Bentley’s steel-belted Yokohamas squealed like a stuck pig. Fuck the mileage! Marty burned tread all the way down the driveway, accelerated past the gates and made a suicidally hard right onto the street. The Bentley heeled over, rose up on two wheels. A six-hundred-dollar hubcap whirled and rattled across the asphalt and was lost in a boxwood hedge.
The car weaved crazily back and forth across the street from curb to curb until, with all the grace of a drunken elephant, it finally crashed back down on all four wheels. Unperturbed, Marty ran a stop sign. Still reeling from the methane fumes, he was in exactly the right mood for a fiery head-on collision with a yellow bus full of special-needs children.
The way Jake treated him was fucking criminal. But it wasn’t all Jake’s fault, was it? He’d let himself slide. Over the years, he’d lost sight of himself and his lofty ambitions. By increments far too small to measure, he’d regressed into a toadying, fart-sniffing chauffeur, driving an ungainly circus act to the exact dead centre of nowhere.
But it is an ill fucking wind that blows nobody good. Slamming the palm of his hand against the dual airhorns, he terrified a gaudily dressed cyclist across the boulevard and into a stone retaining wall. The bicycle crumpled. It was no school bus, but it would do. The rider’s sunglasses exploded in a burst of sharp orange splinters. Soft chunks of turf filled his mouth as he skidded face down and at high speed across a new-mowed lawn.
Marty laughed like a hyena. How true it is, that every mongrel has his day. If there’d been a moon, he’d have reached up, howling, and taken a great big greedy bite right out of it, and swallowed it whole.
36
Ozzie put four Hawaiian and four pepperoni frozen pizzas into the oven. The instructions on the back of the box said twenty minutes at 450 degrees. He set the alarm on his Timex Ironman, and slow-shuffled back into the living room. Dean, Dean, the Sex Machine, and his new friend Melanie were watching a TV quiz show.
Ozzie loitered, unseen, in the doorway. Losing patience, he snapped his fingers. The pop of flesh on flesh was sharp as a small-calibre gunshot. Dean looked up, startled. Melanie ignored him.
Ozzie said, “Get Harry.”
“What for?”
Ozzie bristled. “Hey, while you and the golden bitch girlfriend sat there on your asses watching real-life cartoons, I was in the kitchen, slaving over a burning hot stove! So now I’m asking you, polite as peaches, to haul your lazy ass upstairs and drag Harry outta bed!”
Melanie said, “I’m not his girlfriend.”
“No?” Ozzie turned on her, looked her up and down. “Whose girlfriend are you, Melanie? Harry’s? You still chained to the loser?”
“I’m not chained to anybody.” She gave him a look equivalent to spitting in his eye. “My God, what a way to put it.”
Ozzie smiled. “How’d you like me to put it, Melanie?”
Dean said, “Hey, now ...”
“You still here?”
“Yeah, I guess so. What does it look like?” Dean stood up, and Ozzie tensed as Dean walked towards him. But Dean kept walking, his elbow grazing Ozzie’s shirt as he brushed past him. Ozzie watched Dean vanish from the head down as Dean climbed the stairs to the second floor.
When Dean had entirely disappeared, Ozzie turned towards Melanie and gave her a cool, knowing look. “You think you can mess with the kid’s mind, fuck him up and turn him against me, don’t you?” Melanie stared at him. He said, “Well, you probably could. But the first step Dean took in the wrong direction, I’d put a bullet in his addled brain. And then there’d be nobody around to care about you.” He sneered at her. “Maybe that’s what you want. A woman like you, the life you lead. Maybe you’re so fucked up that nothing would make you happier than an unhappy ending.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know all about you.”
The short chain of Melanie’s handcuffs rattled musically as she leaned back against the La-Z-Boy’s cushions. She said, “Ever been married, Ozzie?”
“Not that I remember.”
They stared at each other, neither of them giving ground. Time crawled by on hands and knees. Neither of them blinked. But when Harold and Dean started down the stairs, Ozzie was the first to look away.
Dean sat Harold down on the sofa, thrust a fresh copy of the Province into his hands. He told him to read the front-page headline and accompanying article, got the battery-powered Sony rolling.
Reading aloud, Harold said, “Chinese Dissident Claims Candu Reactor Used for Military Purposes ...”
“Hold it!” Ozzie rewound the tape. He glowered at Harold. “What the hell’s a Chinese dissident? Read about the runaway cement truck.” He hit the recorder’s play and record buttons. “Okay, hit it ...”
“Runaway Truck Wreaks Havoc,” said Harold flatly. He didn’t have much of a delivery. No sense of drama. He squinted at the paper, peered anxiously up at Ozzie. “I can’t read the rest of it without my glasses.”
“What glasses?”
“My reading glasses.”
Ozzie turned on Dean. “What’d you do with his glasses?”
“Tossed them out the window when I frisked him.”
“Back there on the highway?”
Dean shrugged.
Ozzie mulled it over, thinking hard. Finally he said, “Okay, all we need is about five seconds. Dean, rewind the tape to the headline. I’ll help Harold memorize today’s baseball scores. You tape him when he’s giving the scores, and then he tells Joan if she doesn’t get the five million right away, he’s deader than Babe Ruth.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Dean.
He cued the tape.
Ozzie said, “Mariners eleven, Oakland zero ...”
When they’d finishe
d the recording session, Dean fetched the pizza from the oven, Cokes from the fridge. Melanie was watching her figure. Not Harold.
When they’d killed the pizza, Dean took Harold back upstairs to his room and cuffed him to the brass headboard. Ozzie cuffed Melanie to the La-Z-Boy. Dean told her she might hear screaming, but not to worry about it. Then Ozzie and Dean went down into the basement.
Dean said, “Jeez, he’s dead!”
“Nah, he’s gotta be faking it.” Ozzie had used most of a roll of yellow duct tape on their captive’s ankles and hands and mouth. The guy had so much yellow tape wrapped around him he might’ve been wearing Harold’s spare suit.
Ozzie hunkered down. He said, “The light’s been on all this time. Don’t tell me you didn’t take a look around. Notice the freezer? That’s where you’re gonna end up in about thirty seconds, you don’t wake up.”
Steve opened his bloodshot eyes.
Ozzie said, “I’m gonna rip the tape off your mouth, so we can dialogue. Scream, it’s freezerville.”
He ripped away the tape.
The guy shrieked, a short, sharp cry of agony. Ozzie punched his face into the concrete. He showed him the Ruger.
“See this?”
“Yeah, I see it.”
“What’s your name?”
“Steve.”
“What’s this, Steve?”
“A gun.”
“Tell me something. Would you rather be shot dead, or buried alive in that fuckin’ freezer?”
“Neither.”
Ozzie bounced Steve’s head off the concrete. “If you had to choose, asshole!”
“Shot. But it has to be a flesh wound.”
Ozzie stood up, went over to the freezer and flipped open the lid. He snapped his fingers at Dean. “Gimme a hand.”
Ozzie got his hands under Steve’s armpits. Dean took his feet. Steve went limp.
Ozzie said, “Okay, we’re gonna pick him up and lay him across the top of the freezer so we only have to hold him a little, balance him so he don’t fall in by accident.”
Dean grunted, as he hoisted his end.
“Easy now ...”
Steve lay there on top of the open freezer, in delicate balance, a gentle push away from the void. A thin, frosty-cold fog rose up from the freezer. Dean took a long step backwards but could still feel the cold reaching up at him, fingers like icicles plucking at him, wanting to pull him down. He shivered.
Ozzie rested his hand on Steve’s shoulder. He rocked him towards the hungry belly of the freezer, pulled him back. “Steve, I’m gonna ask you some questions. Lie and you die. Where’s your wallet?”
“It must be in the truck.”
“The cable truck?”
“Yeah, the cable truck.”
“It ain’t in the cable truck, Steve. Dean looked, and he couldn’t find it. He found the cable guy, Richard, wrapped up in about a mile of coaxial cable. But he didn’t find your wallet.”
Steve thought it over, considered the possibilities. He said, “Maybe it fell out of my pocket when I got slugged. Maybe it’s outside, in the garden.”
“By the sundeck?”
“Yeah, or somewhere in between.”
“Between here and the sundeck?”
“Yeah.”
“We already looked, Steve. No wallet.”
Steve licked his lips. He said, “I’m cold.”
“Think so? You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Ozzie pushed and pulled, pushed and pulled. Steve glanced down, into the blue-white recesses of the freezer. He shuddered. “I just got paid. Two weeks, plus overtime. I had almost two thousand bucks in that wallet.” His body convulsed. “Maybe ...”
“Maybe one of us took it? Is that what you’re saying, Steve? Me? You calling me a thief?” Ozzie had a fistful of Steve’s T-shirt. He gave him a good shake. He pointed at Dean. “Or are you calling him a thief?”
Steve’s face was pale. He shivered a little. Not much. The rising fog had turned the hair on the left side of his head silvery grey.
Ozzie said, “Who do you work for, Steve?”
“Jake Cappalletti.” Steve’s teeth chattered like a runaway Castanet. He said, “I work for Jake Cappalletti.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Jake’s into drugs, prostitution, gambling, the used-car market. He’s a mobster, been around for centuries. He owns Harold Wismer.”
“Yeah?”
“Wismer was laundering money for him.”
“That’s nice. Who the fuck is Harold Wismer?”
Steve shrugged. A fatal error, because Ozzie had just relaxed his grip on Steve’s T-shirt. Falling, Steve straightened his legs and somehow managed to wedge his head into one corner of the freezer and brace his duct-taped feet against the diagonally opposite corner. There he stuck, fully extended. A horizontal man standing at rigid attention.
Ozzie leaned over him. He punched him in the stomach with his fist. Steve grunted. Tears froze solid on his cheeks. Ozzie hit him again, a quick left-right-left combination. Steve sagged. He twisted and squirmed.
Punch punch punch.
Steve screamed shrilly, a piercing wail that did not sound human. Ozzie held nothing back as he delivered a ruthlessly low blow.
Steve’s face purpled. He folded up, and collapsed to the bottom of the freezer. Chunks of frost tumbled away from the icy walls. He kicked out at Ozzie with his bound feet. Ozzie slammed the freezer’s heavily insulated lid.
Steve’s husky screams seemed to come from miles and miles away.
Ozzie went over to the rough wooden stairs that led up to the main floor of the house. He was about ten feet from the freezer, but he could still hear, quiet as a memory, Steve’s desperate cries.
He said, “Good insulation. Must be loud as hell in there.”
Dean nodded. He looked shaken.
Ozzie climbed two steps. Louder. Would he ever fully understand the complex science of acoustics? No way. He descended to the concrete, lit a cigarette, dropped the smoking match to the floor.
Dean said, “I’m going upstairs.”
Ozzie moved aside, giving him room to pass. “Don’t mention Steve to Melanie, ’kay?”
Dean gave him a look. Partly resentment but mostly fear. Ozzie could live with that.
He was all ears, as he smoked his cigarette down to the filter. Steve’s muted cries had faded to inaudible by the time he stepped on the butt. He checked his watch. Six minutes.
He went over to the freezer and stood quietly, listening.
Silence.
He placed his hand on the flat, enamelled steel lid. The metal vibrated minutely, but that was because of the motor, working to bring the temperature back down to minus twenty degrees.
Ozzie leaned over, pressed his ear to the lid.
Steve whispered, syllable by syllable, his desire to be let out.
Ozzie felt the blood fall away from his face. Jesus. He hoisted himself up on the lid, lit another cigarette. A few minutes later, he found himself idly banging his heels against the side of the freezer. Funny thing to do. What did Steve think, hearing that noise?
When he’d finished his second cigarette, he leaned over and pressed his ear to the freezer lid.
Nothing.
He released the catch and lifted the lid, to see what he might see.
37
Willows hated some aspects of surveillance. The wretched, unavoidable schoolboy sneakiness of it. He lifted the Zeiss binoculars to his eyes. The focus was wrong. By the time he had Joan clearly in view she was already turning away from the UPS driver, a padded envelope about the size of a phone book tucked under her arm. The front door banged shut. The UPS driver, jogging down the stairs, glanced back with a what-did-I-do-now look on his face.
A few moments later, the van cruised slowly past the police listening post. Parker started the unmarked Ford’s engine, made a U-turn and followed the van to the end of the block before she lit up her dashboard fireball.
The van pulled
over to the curb.
Parker got out of the Ford. She walked slowly towards the van, timing her approach so she and Willows arrived at the same moment.
The van’s driver wore a drab brown UPS uniform, matching cap. He was in his mid-thirties, considerably overweight. He wore wire-frame glasses with undersized, peach-tinted circular lenses. His shirt pocket held five identical ballpoint pens. His stitched-on nametag said MILTON. He slid back the van’s door and tilted his beachball face down at Willows and Parker.
“Hey, officers. What’s up?”
Parker said, “Is that your shirt?”
“Yeah, it’s my shirt.”
“Then you must be Milton.”
“Yeah, I’m Milton.”
“What’d you deliver to the Wismer residence, Milton?”
“I dunno. A package.”
“What kind of package?” said Willows.
“Small. About so big.” Milton moved his hands. He wore no wedding ring.
Willows said, “Let’s have a look at your manifest, Milton.”
“I dunno if I’m allowed to do that.”
“Okay, fine. Be obstructive. Call your supervisor. Tell him, the way things are going, you should be back on the road by midnight.”
“No, wait a minute. What’s this all about?”
“An opportunity to co-operate,” said Parker, smiling.
Milton’s belly shifted to accommodate the steering wheel as he leaned sideways. He offered a clipboard to Parker, and she took it.
Willows read the manifest over her shoulder. The package had been picked up at a Kinko’s copying services outlet on Broadway. The customer’s name was John Smith. He’d paid cash for the delivery, used the store for a return address. His signature was a terse, illegible scrawl.
Parker said, “What was in the package, Milton?”
“It’s listed right there.” Milton’s oily thumb tapped the paper.
“I can’t read that,” said Parker. “Can you?”
“Not really.”
“What’s that other word?” said Parker.
“Fragile.”
“Fragile?”
“Easily broken.”
Willows said, “Like a nose, huh?”
Milton eyed him uneasily.
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