Little Elvises

by Timothy Hallinan

  “It’s backward,” I said.

  Fronts looked down at himself and then turned back to the mirror. “Shit,” he said. “I do that all the time.”

  “Kind of a painful way to learn about symmetrical letters.”

  He used his thumb and forefinger to pluck a fold of skin just above the bleeding word, pulled it out, and poised the sharp edge of the knife over it. “Don’t hurt as much as erasing it,” he said. He started to slice at himself.

  I absolutely could not look. I turned my head a couple of inches, toward the bed with Ronnie on it, and there Fronts was, his arm clamped around my neck, the knife at my throat, and his lips peeled back from his speed-freak-brown teeth. “If I’d cut myself like that,” he said, “think what I’d do to you.”

  I shoved the gun into his gut and tried not to choke on his smell.

  “Knife’s at your carotid,” he said. “One little nick, you’ll be down. You pull the trigger, think I’ll die before I nick you? Are you sure? Also,” he said, pushing the knife just a little harder, “you shouldn’t forget that I don’t care.”

  “Everybody says that.” I could barely breathe.

  “Junior,” he said. “It’s me. Fronts. You gotta know I don’t give a shit.”

  “That’s the plan? You’re going to kill me?”

  The door behind me opened, and Louie the Lost pushed through it, looked at the two of us, and turned white. “Oh, geez,” he said, staring at Fronts. “You two guys, uh, you want some privacy?”

  I gasped, “Thanks a lot, Louie.”

  Louie said, “No problem,” and backed out, so fast he didn’t even close the door.

  “Friend of yours?” Fronts took his arm off me and took a step back, keeping the knife at my throat.

  “You can never tell.”

  “Listen, Junior. If I wanna kill you, you think I’m gonna stand here, borrow your mirror, write on myself? Shit, DNA everywhere for the cops. Why not just cut off a finger, leave it here so they get a good print?” He took the knife away from my throat and put the edge against the index finger of his left hand.

  “Please don’t,” I said. “Not in my room.”

  “It’s a really shitty room.”

  I said, “Yeah, but I’ll still have to replace the carpet.”

  Fronts turned away and went to the bed. He pulled the blanket down, checked to see that Ronnie was still doing her unconscious imitation of The Scream, and said, “Pretty girl, huh?”

  “She’s looked better.”

  “You might want to walk her around, throw her in some cold water. You never know, maybe the dose was too big. You got any speed?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad. Oh, well, I ain’t died from it yet. She smart?”

  “Smart enough.”

  “Good, because she’ll lose some brain cells. But I use it all the time, and look at me.” He tugged the covers over her face again.

  I said, “That’s very reassuring,” and then jumped a foot in the air as the door behind me banged against the wall, so loudly that it almost drowned out the sound of my gun going off as I accidentally yanked the trigger. The gun jumped once in my hand, and the bullet went through the outside of Fronts’s upper right arm and slammed into the wall with a white puff of plaster. My ears were ringing like someone had clapped his hands over them. I turned to see Louie standing there with a shotgun.

  Fronts said, “Ouch.”

  I said, “Sorry.”

  Louie, who had the shotgun trained on Fronts, said, “Sorry?”

  “He shot me,” Fronts explained. He pushed his index finger into the bullet hole.

  “Please,” Louie said, going even paler. “Stop that.”

  “Feels kind of cool,” Fronts said. He pushed the finger farther in and twisted it, and Louie’s eyes went to the ceiling, and he crumpled as though his knees had dissolved. Fortunately, the shotgun didn’t go off. Louie lay folded neatly over it, in the middle of one of the carpet’s larger stains.

  “You gonna shoot me again?” Fronts asked.

  “No. I think I’m done.”

  Outside, I heard a door slam and then I heard the hard slap of shoes on the far stairway.

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Get into the bathroom. Now.” I pushed my gun under the blankets next to Ronnie and grabbed the shotgun beneath the collapsed Louie, but it snagged on his shirt. I said something filthy, got a foot under him, and rolled him over to free the gun. I’d just slid the gun under the bed when Marge barged in.

  “What the hell—” She stopped, looking across the room at Fronts, who hadn’t moved an inch. “Who in the world are you? And who’s he?” She pointed down at Louie, who was starting to come around, his eyelids fluttering like a moth’s wings. She sniffed the air. “Who fired a gun?”

  “No one,” I said, but Fronts, the tattletale, said, “He did, Mom. He shot me.” He grabbed the flesh around the bullet hole and yanked at it, as though he intended to hand it to her. “Here.”

  “Who the hell are you to call me Mom?” Marge took an aggressive step forward, her sequins glinting dangerously. “What are you, anyway, the human blackboard? If Junior shot you, he had a good reason.” She looked down at his dangling hand. “Is that a boning knife?”

  “Henckels Four-Star,” Fronts said mildly, raising it to show it to her.

  “About seventy-five bucks?” Marge said.

  “Fifty-two-fifty,” Fronts said. “Costco.”

  “Good price,” Marge said. “But you don’t go using it on a paying guest. Not in this economy.”

  “Sorry,” Fronts said.

  “And put your shirt on. You think this is Zuma? Wait a minute. Lift both your arms.”

  Fronts obeyed, displaying the four-foot-long, single scar that started beneath his left arm, ran all the way down to the top of his pants, crossed over beneath his belly-button to his right hipbone, and traveled up to his right armpit. “Jesus,” Marge said. “Looks like the hood of a car. Where’d you get that?”

  “Around,” Fronts said. He sounded shy.

  “Who stitched you up, a sailmaker?” The stitches had left a red crisscross trail the full length of the cut.

  “Did it myself,” Fronts said, looking down at it critically. “It was hard, upside down.”

  “I’ll bet. Well, this isn’t your neighborhood, bub. Put your shirt on and beat it.” She looked down at Louie. “Anybody shoot him?”

  “He fainted,” I said.

  “Junior,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m disappointed in you. If you weren’t special to me, I’d throw your butt in the street for this. Shooting a man in Blitzen.”

  Fronts said, “Blitzen? Like the reindeer?”

  “Don’t tell me they had Christmas where you came from. Just get dressed and get out.” Marge flicked a finger at the works on the bureau. “And take that filthy dope with you.” She prodded Louie with her foot, and he groaned. “Present and accounted for,” she said. “Where’s Ronnie?”

  “Taking a nap,” I said, gesturing toward the bed.

  “Girl can’t drink,” she said. “You might want to walk her around, maybe haul her into the shower.”

  “That’s what I just said,” Fronts said.

  Marge didn’t even glance at him. “I’m going now, but if I hear anything more, I’ll be back with Ed’s service revolver and shoot all of you.”

  “Okay, Mom,” Fronts said.

  “And don’t call me Mom,” Marge said, going through the door.

  I went to the door and closed it behind her, and when I turned around, Fronts had the knife at my throat again. He reversed it and sawed with the blunt edge across the side of my neck, which was enough to loosen my knees. “This here is what I came to tell you,” he said, his breath smelling like aged meat. “Stop.”

  I thought for a second. “Stop what?”

  “I don’t know,” Fronts said. “But stop. If you don’t, I’m gonna hurt you for a few hours and then open you up like—like, what did she say? Like the hood of a car.�
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  “I can’t stop if I don’t know what I’m supposed to stop.”

  “That’s your problem.” Fronts turned the knife around and suddenly there was a stinging line on the left side of my throat. “Right about there, but deeper,” he said. “You got any Mercurochrome?”

  “I guess.” My fingers came away with blood on them.

  “You oughta use it. You don’t wanna get infected.” He licked the side of the knife. “Stop everything. Next time you see me, you’re going to hurt until you’re dead.”

  Louie groaned and opened his eyes.

  “Squeamish little guy, aren’t you?” Fronts said, letting go of me and leaning over him. He wiggled his index finger and aimed it at the bullet hole again. Louie closed his eyes. “Your sidekicks,” he said. “A guy who faints and an old lady in sparkles.”

  “I didn’t notice you giving her any lip.”

  “Tell you what, Junior,” Fronts said. “Whyn’t you just shoot me? Then you won’t have to worry about nothing.”

  “Marge will kill me,” I said.

  “No, she won’t,” he said. “But I will.” He put the knife on the bureau and stuck his arms into a plaid short-sleeve shirt the size of a tablecloth. “Fashion tip,” he said, buttoning it. “If you’re probably gonna bleed, wear plaid.”

  “Should have told me before you cut me.” I watched him zip up the case full of syringes. “Take the empty,” I said. “Who sent you?”

  “Doesn’t work that way.” He picked up the used hypodermic and shoved it point-first into the pocket of his jeans. I felt myself wince. Fronts said, “Ow.”

  “Be careful or it’ll break off.”

  “Yeah?” He made a ham-size fist and swung it against the pocket with the needle in it. “Whaddya know?” he said. “It will.” He headed past me, toward the door. When I stepped aside, he grabbed me again, and out of nowhere, there was a hypo pressed into the skin just below my left eye. “Don’t point a gun at me again, Junior,” he said. “Not unless you’re gonna shoot me. Now ask me to move the needle. And say please.”

  “Move the needle, please.”

  Fronts gave me a tombstone grin. “Which way?”

  “Away from the eye.”

  “You got it,” he said, and he lowered the needle to my cheek, shoved it in half an inch, and pushed the plunger. “That’s just a touch,” he said, pulling the needle out and showing it to me. The plunger was only about a quarter of the way down. “Should give you an interesting few hours.”

  My cheek and jaw were suddenly ice-cold. “Shame shtuff?” I heard myself ask. “Shame ash you gave her?” My tongue felt like a cork.

  “Yeah.” He jabbed the needle into the inside of his elbow and hammered the plunger home.

  “Course, I’m used to it. You and sweetie over there, it’ll all be bright and shiny new. Gimme forty bucks.”

  I said, with considerable difficulty, “You shaid shirty.”

  “That was before I gave you some. Ten bucks more.”

  “I need to si’ down,” I said. I felt as though I’d spent several hours with my head and shoulders stuffed forcibly into a freezer.

  “Money, money, money.” Fronts wiggled his fingers at me. “Gimme. Then I’m gone.”

  I pulled money out of my pocket and held it out while the floor tilted, and then I watched Fronts dwindle as I stumbled back, away from him, until the backs of my legs hit the bed. I bounced to a landing beside Ronnie, who didn’t even grunt.

  Fronts grabbed the money. “Forty,” he said, counting. “Okay?” He held up a few green rectangles of paper with numbers of some kind on them. “Nod, if you can move your head.” I couldn’t, and he said, “Okay, let your jaw drop.” That I could manage, and he threw the rest of the money into my lap.

  “One more time,” he said, and I realized I’d gone someplace while he walked to the door. “One word, Junior. Stop.”

  He closed the door and I folded forward, fell off the bed, and landed on my face on the carpet.

  It seemed to me that I studied it for quite a while, trying to decipher the code that was hidden there, before I gave up and went somewhere dark and full of ripples.

  “Drink it up,” Louie said. “Just num num num.”

  “I’m a grown-up, Louie.” My watch said 11:30 P.M., so I’d been gone for a while.

  “Num num num always worked with my daughters,” Louie said. He gestured, palm up, for me to tilt the cup and drink.

  I gulped it and scalded my tongue. Good. Feeling was returning.

  “Careful, it’s hot.”

  I stuck my tongue out as far as I could to let the air cool it. The shower made shower noises in the bathroom, but I was listening around it for the sound of a body hitting the tiles. Ronnie had still been several stations beyond wasted when I finally got her under the cold water.

  “More, more,” Louie said.

  “In a second,” I said. “That meat you smell cooking is my tongue.”

  “Don’t be a baby.” Before I’d staggered into the bathroom with Ronnie over one shoulder, Louie had gone across the street for coffee and then he’d darted into the bathroom and come back with a wet facecloth. As I sat on the bed, waiting for the coffee to cool, he was wiping every washable surface in the place.

  “What are you doing? Getting rid of prints?”

  “Getting rid of Fronts,” he said without looking back at me. “Guy leaves slime everywhere he goes. Mopping it up gets my heart back under control.” He was scrubbing at the spot where the hypodermic had drooled on the bureau. “Drink your coffee.”

  “Thanks for coming in with the shotgun,” I said. “That took guts.”

  “I don’t wanna think about it,” Louie said. “Musta been crazy. Fuckin’ Fronts, he could take both barrels and not even limp. Guy’s so dumb he’d probably rip you apart before he realized he was dead.”

  “You know him from before?” The coffee was getting drinkable.

  Louie shrugged, bringing both hands up in his one and only Italian-looking gesture. “Know who he is. Everybody knows who he is, with those scars. He’s like the Last Tax Audit. Guy shows up, it’s so over it’s not even worth arguing about it.” He shook the facecloth open, primly refolded it to get a clean surface, then started wiping again. “You figure it was Stinky sent him?”

  “No. Fronts told me to stop, right? What Stinky’s pissed about has already happened. I already talked to Dressler and that’s what got Stinky in an uproar, so there’s nothing there for me to stop. I figure it’s whoever did Derek. In fact, when you think about Derek, pretty much crumbled like an animal cracker, it sort of sings Fronts.”

  “I fucking hate animal crackers,” Louie said. “I always got elephants. Wanted lions or tigers, but I always got elephants.”

  “Poor kid. No wonder you turned to crime.”

  “Think he was in the Humvee?” Louie said. “The one that chased you—”

  “Could be. There aren’t many cars Fronts would fit in, but a Humvee is one of them.”

  “ ’Cause if it’s about Derek,” Louie said, “then Vinnie’s alibi don’t mean so much. If he hired it done, and all.”

  “Hold the thought,” I said. “I need more coffee before I try to think about anything.”

  “Take your time,” Louie said. “Fronts probably won’t come back or anything.”

  “Don’t worry. He’s home by now, carving the Times crossword into his chest.”

  “Hard to imagine Fronts having a home except maybe in the roots of a tree. What about the other thing, the thing with Marge’s daughter?”

  “What about it?”

  “You don’t figure Fronts—”

  “No. Pivensey or Huff, whatever you call him, he’s a solo, a freak but not a pro. He kills girls and moves along. Somebody like Fronts would terrify him.”

  “So it’s Derek,” Louie said.

  “What’s Derek?” Ronnie said from the door to the bathroom. She was wrapped in a towel, her hair dripping water onto her shoulders and her
eyes at half-mast. I hadn’t heard the shower shut off, so I was still in slow-learner mode.

  “The man who isn’t here,” I said. “The one you slept through.”

  “I didn’t sleep. I was hit with a block of cement.” She reached up, grabbed her hair, gave it a bunch of twists, and wrung it out.

  Louie said, “Ouch.”

  “Doesn’t hurt,” she said. She slapped herself experimentally on the cheek. “I don’t think anything will ever hurt again.”

  “That’s what I said after my divorce,” I said.

  “Awwww,” Louie said, “that’s sadder than my elephants.”

  “Who was he?” Ronnie asked, and then she took a little sidestep just to remain upright.

  “A hit man named Arthur Love Johnson,” I said. “Used to be called Algae on account of his initials, until he discovered the joy of carving things into himself. Since he can’t turn his head all the way around to the back, he concentrated on his front. So now they call him Fronts.”

  “How colorful,” Ronnie said. “What did he want with you?”

  “He was cautioning me to stop looking into Derek’s murder.”

  “We think,” Louie said.

  “Well, so stop,” Ronnie said. “You’re more important to me alive than Derek is dead.”

  I said, “That’s sweet.”

  “Got you some coffee,” Louie said, popping the plastic top from a paper cup. “While you were, um, freshening up.”

  “You’re right,” Ronnie said to me, taking the cup. “He’s wet. And thanks.”

  “Wet?” Louie asked.

  “Never mind,” I said. “What brought you here, anyway?”

  “Her,” Louie said, lifting his chin at Ronnie. “I got a call that she was looking really drunk when she came out of Marge’s, and …” He broke off, sucked his lips in, and made a defeated little squelching sound with them.

  “You,” Ronnie said to him, narrow-eyed, but then she turned to me. “I mean, you. You’re still having me followed.”

  “And look what happened,” I said immediately. “A hit man, a guy who—”

  “He came after you, not me. As far as I can tell, my throat didn’t get cut.”

  “It doesn’t hurt that much,” I said, although it did.