The cutthroat w-2

by Jason Frost

  Eric could see he'd probed a nerve, that Blackjack's feelings about Rachel Loeb were deeper than he wanted to admit. He changed the subject. "Tell me about Alabaster. What's the fuss about his map?"

  Blackjack removed a small leather pouch from his pants pocket and a packet of Zig-Zag cigarette papers. Deftly he sprinkled some of the contents of the pouch on the paper, spit-sealed it, and lit it with an almost-empty Bic lighter. He inhaled deeply, held the smoke in his chest for a long minute, his eyes blinking rapidly as if he were in some pain, then exhaled the sweet smoke at the Piper Cub. "BLACK EX-DOCTOR DOPE FIEND PIRATE." He smiled, sweeping his hand across the air as if underlining a newspaper headline. He shook his head. "If we ever get off this island, we're going to spend the first six months just being interviewed by reporters. Ebony magazine's going to be disappointed in me." He looked at Tracy and Eric as he expected some disapproving remark.

  Neither said anything. Eric had never really gotten a foothold in the drug culture of his peers. He'd popped a few uppers in college, smoked some grass to be sociable at parties, ingested an LSD sugar cube because he was curious. The uppers had given him a headache; the pot had only made his tongue taste dry and trampled-on; the LSD had been one pleasant euphoric dream, none of the screaming demons he'd expected to encounter. Nevertheless, he avoided all-how did the cops put it now?- "controlled substances," not so much out of disapproval, as out of fear. Fear that he would not be in total control of himself when he needed to be.

  There it was. That word. Control. Annie had often accused him of wanting to control every situation, even harmless social gatherings. "Not overtly," she'd complained after one Sunday brunch with some of her friends from jazzercize class. "Just somehow, even when you don't say anything for hours, we all get the feeling we're doing just what you want us to. Oh, hell, I'm being silly."

  But she was right. He scrutinized everyone, no matter how subtle and smiling he tried to be. And eventually most wilted under his gaze, as if they feared he had discovered a terrible secret about them. Their friends had been few, a fact that sometimes disturbed Annie, who'd been brought up to be a much-more social creature. "Even without saying anything," she'd said, "you ask too much of people. You judge them." But the friends they'd cultivated over the years were fiercely loyal, the way Eric thought they should be.

  Blackjack leaned against the fuselage of the Piper Cub and slid his back along the metal hull until he was sitting on the ground, flicking the ashes from his joint on a jagged piece of glass at his feet. Eric helped Tracy to sit, arranging her legs so the hip was less painful.

  "You remember," Blackjack began, "when the cops and military got together after the first quake and did their door-to-door thing? Confiscated everybody's guns because of all the looting and panicking neighbors shooting each other."

  Eric saw the jeep parked outside his house, the men brandishing rifles on his doorstep; Annie and the kids frightened; Eric's crusty old mother demanding proof of their authorization, studying the piece of paper they reluctantly handed her as Eric arrived. All dead now. Except Timmy.

  "I remember," Eric nodded.

  "Well, all those guns and ammunition were sent to secret stockpile locations where they were heavily guarded. Even though they'd given receipts for the weapons and promised to return them after the situation returned to normal, orders had come down to destroy all the guns. They managed to do just that at most of the stockpiles. But not all." He took another deep drag on his joint, sucking air between his teeth. A think film of sweat had popped out along his forehead. "Each one of those stockpiles contained enough firepower to start a small army. And considering the state of most the weaponry on this island right now, whoever gets ahold of those caches could storm across California and rule it anyway they see fit."

  "Things are tough enough around here without that kind of thing," Tracy said.

  "Damn right, lady. But business is business, at least that's the way Alabaster saw it. He was a computer programmer who was also in the National Guard. His unit had been called up after the first quake and he was assigned as one of the guards at a weapons stockpile. When the next quakes hit, everyone at the stockpile was killed."

  "Except Alabaster," Eric said. "And he made a map."

  "Yeah. He hid them all at a new location, just in case anyone was alive who knew about the stockpile. He was the only one who knew where all those glorious weapons were. He didn't have the stomach or ambition to use them himself in a conquering march across California, but he knew there were plenty of others who'd gladly take up the banner. He approached Rhino."

  "I'll bet he did," Eric said. "And Rhino probably peed his pants at the thought of all those guns."

  Blackjack laughed. "He does run around like a nervous poodle with a jet up his ass. I've seen some cases of manic depression in medical school, and treated hyperactive children at the hospital, but I've never seen anything quite like Rhino. He's like an overwound spring."

  "Do you think he wanted the guns for himself or to sell them to someone else?" Tracy asked.

  "I'd guess he was going to use them himself. He'd recruit an army, arm them, and start at one end of the state and march lengthwise until he was King of California. He'd do it just to keep his mind and body occupied while it was moving. But he'd also enjoy it." Blackjack inhaled another lungful of smoke, tapped the end of the joint against the chip of glass until the butt was dead. He slipped the rest into his pocket. "But according to Mrs. Alabaster back in the hospital, her husband's boat was attacked while they were on their way to meet Rhino. Alabaster was killed, but she managed to hang on to a life jacket for a couple days. We picked her up two days ago. Found Alabaster's body last night."

  "Must have been soon after we were picked up by Rhino's ship." Eric tapped the gun absently against his palm. "But if Rhino doesn't have the map, who does?"

  Blackjack's lip arced smugly. "Alabaster may have been a whiz with computers, but when it came to dealing with badasses, he was one dumb white boy. Christine Alabaster filled us in on most of the details." Blackjack laughed again, but coldly, without humor. "That lumpy doughboy Rhino wants that map so bad. And he doesn't know how close it is."

  Eric stared at Blackjack, letting his eyes rake the black man's expression. He understood. "Rhino was double-crossed. He didn't know Alabaster was dead. Someone from his own ship went out a couple days early to meet Alabaster, kill him, and steal the map. Then the double-crosser pretended to be confused when Alabaster didn't show up for the meeting. That's the person with the map. And there's only one person on that ship with enough brains, guts, and arrogance to outsmart Rhino. Angel."

  Blackjack looked surprised. "You know her?"

  "Enough to know that her nickname is short for Angel of Mercy, a cruel irony that street people in Vietnam thought appropriate. She always got what she wanted, most of the time through personal torture of reluctant business associates. She used a balisong knife and knew just where to cut." He winced remembering when they'd found a whimpering heap of a person she'd just finished with. Lying facedown in a puddle of blood, he was paralyzed from the neck down, almost drowning in his own blood. His exposed spine was slashed with cross-hatches from neck to buttocks. Two of the soldiers with Eric had thrown up. The man begged them to kill him, but orders required he be brought back for interrogation. Col. Dirk Fallows had backed the jeep up to the door as they loaded the man into the back. "That damn woman is a regular Veg-o-matic." Fallows had grinned, making his voice deep like a TV huckster's. "She slices, she dices, she juliennes."

  Tracy reached out to Blackjack. "Give me a hit." She inhaled the smoke like a college girl puffing her first cigarette, coughed, handed the joint back. She cleared her throat to speak. "Never could get the hang of it. And if ever there was a time to be flat-on-your-ass stoned, this is it."

  "As a former doctor," Blackjack said, sucking in another gallon of smoke, his voice pinched as he tried to speak and keep the smoke in at the same time, "I have to warn you that smoking can b
e hazardous to your health."

  Tracy laughed, the sudden movement detonating land mines of pain in her hip. She gritted her teeth, tears welling in her eyes.

  "So according to Christine Alabaster," Eric continued, "Angel has the map to the stockpile of weapons. But we know that Rhino is unaware of her little treachery. He's still out there searching for Alabaster."

  "Right. That's why Rachel insisted we try to blow them up right away. It doesn't matter whether Rhino or Angel eventually gets the weapons. Whoever gets them, it will be bad for this settlement… not to mention the rest of California." He hesitated, stared directly at Eric. "But if we had the weapons, we could at least fight back against any marauders. These people could move back to the land and live like humans, not water rats."

  "So you want the map too?" Eric said.

  "Yes. To defend ourselves."

  Eric looked at Tracy. "How do you feel?"

  "Okay. Actually, the hip's better. Probably be good as new in a couple days."

  Blackjack shook his head. "You'll be able to walk without a cane in a week or two," he said, then hesitated, tapping the burning end of the joint against the hunk of glass. "But you won't be as good as new. You'll probably limp slightly for the rest of your life."

  Eric didn't say anything, nor did he move toward her. This kind of knowledge needed to be absorbed alone. He had suspected the bullet had chipped off a bit too much bone, mashed too many nerves.

  "What?" Tracy smiled, as if she really hadn't heard him or had thought he was joking. She had the look of most people when told they had a permanent disability, no matter how minor. The pale gaze of disbelief, the ashen expression as all of their confidence drained out of their bodies. If one thing could go wrong, then anything might. Their aura of invincibility was shattered forever.

  "It might have been worse," Blackjack explained. "You might have lost the leg."

  Tracy glared at the bandage on her hip, then suddenly tore it off as if that were the cause of her injury. "Goddamn it," she screamed. "Goddamn this place." She threw the bloody bandage in Blackjack's face. He didn't try to stop her, nor did he protect himself. He let it hit, leaving a spongy splotch of her blood on his forehead. The bandage tumbled down his chest and onto the ground. He picked it up, crawled over to Tracy, and silently reattached the bandage. She let him.

  "What do you want from us?" Eric asked Blackjack while he was hunched over Tracy's hip.

  "Huh?"

  "You didn't tell us all this just for friendly conversation. You want something."

  Blackjack tucked the flaps of Tracy's pants over her bandage and looked up at Eric. "I know who you are, Ravensmith. I didn't at first, but Rachel recognized you from the news on TV. When you testified at Fallows' trial. I know a little bit about your background. I don't mean the history professor jazz, I mean that Night Shift stuff in 'Nam. No matter how much I act like a pirate, I know a hell of a lot more about medicine. But you know about soldiering, I mean real fighting. And we could use you for what we have in mind."

  "Just what do you have in mind?"

  He rocked back on his heels and hugged his knees, his dark eyes shining with intensity. "We've got to figure Rhino will need to recruit a few more crew members after what we did to him earlier. And he'll want to try to pick up a line on Alabaster. There's only one place he can go to do both. Liar's Cove. A little fortress of scum where anything goes. At Liar's Cove there is no law, and nothing is too weird or kinky."

  "Get to the point."

  "I figure that's where Angel will try to slip away and recruit her own crew, then head for the weapons." He picked up a loose screw from the cement floor, threw it out the broken window next to the Piper. A second later they heard the splash. "I want to go to Liar's Cove and kidnap Angel. We get the map from her and find the weapons ourselves."

  "Jesus," Tracy said. "Talk about limping for the rest of your life. Your brain must be limping along on one cylinder."

  Eric's lips twisted into a grim smile. "And what do we get out of it if we agree?"

  "Eric!" Tracy said.

  Encouraged, Blackjack leaned closer, speaking quickly like a conspirator assuring a reluctant ally that the alarm systems have been cut. "You can have your pick of the weapons. All both of you can carry. And passage to wherever you want. You must have been heading somewhere in that canoe. We'll deliver you there in our ship. Safe and sound. And heavily armed."

  Eric stood up, offered a hand to Tracy. He pulled her to her feet and handed her the spear for a cane. They started walking back toward The Runway, Blackjack trailing behind them.

  "We'll think about it," Eric said.

  "Sure, that's all I ask."

  "California," Tracy mumbled, as if that said it all.

  12.

  "Are you nuts?"

  The question struck Eric as funny so he laughed, his head, thrown back, the.38 he'd taken from Blackjack stuffed into his waistband. The butt dug into his stomach as it jumped from his laughing, rubbing the skin underneath raw. He let it.

  "I mean it, Eric," Tracy continued, easing herself to the floor of the Xerox room which Blackjack had turned over to them. It was one of the few actual rooms in the building with a real door that even locked from the inside. Eric locked it behind him. Blackjack had called this the settlement's honeymoon suite because its use was alternated every night by different couples. They had a sign-up sheet attached to a clipboard hanging on a nail outside the door.

  "What's to think about, for Christ's sake," Tracy added. "Let's get our canoe and get the hell out of here."

  Eric didn't answer her right away. He was thinking. Not about Blackjack's offer or Angel or Rhino or Alabaster or Liar's Cove. He was back to The Centurion and that woman he'd killed. Crow, they'd called her. She'd been singing outside their stateroom door.

  "Every day, it's a gettin' closer, goin' faster than a roller coaster…"

  Eric backed against the long wooden table with its three-hole Hunt-Boston paper punch and green paper cutter still resting where it had before the quakes. He couldn't get that song out of his head.

  "Love like yours will truly come my way…"

  He remembered Buddy Holly, his mom sneaking him into a concert when the Crickets played Tucson. Eric was nine. Everybody else's mother was always dragging him to hear Frankie Laine or Pat Boone. But Eric's mother liked to dance, to move. That night his father had remained on the Hopi reservation to haul a few more wheelbarrows of rocks from the mountain he was carving to resemble one of their legendary chiefs. His father didn't like Buddy Holly because of his black thick-rimmed glasses. "Makes him look like a busboy in an Oklahoma roadside diner."

  "Come what may, do you ever long for true love from me-ee-ee?"

  That was 1959. Three months later Buddy Holly died in a plane crash. Also on board was Ritchie Valens and J. P. Richardson. Eric's mother had cried, worn a black arm band while teaching her archeology class at the university that afternoon. At the end of class she played "Rave On" on a tinny old record player from the audiovisual department. That night Eric's father brought out his finest block of granite and started sculpting a bust of Buddy Holly for her. It took three years for him to finish and it was not very good because, though he was an enthusiastic artist, he was not very talented. But Eric's mother kept it on her piano long after Eric's father died.

  Eric smiled at the memory, savoring it a bit. Good memories were so hard to recall these days, when one came he sometimes couldn't decide if it was of something that really had happened or if he was just making it up.

  "Hey, earth to Eric. Come in, please." Tracy was waving at him.

  "A little static, Houston Control. Can't copy."

  She smiled. "Try an emergency landing, pal, 'cause Rod Serling has taken over down here. He's got us holed up in some flooded building that's been transformed into a farm. He's got us negotiating with some giant ex-pediatrician who claims he's a pirate, while avoiding an ape with a melted face and his companion, a Vietnamese Mata Hari with a kink
y streak. And now-boy, Rod's really outdone himself this time-now he's got our heroes, Eric and Gimpy, discussing the possibility of kidnapping the aforementioned Vietnamese vixen from under the nose of said custard-faced ape in the midst of some thieves' and murderers' hideout called Liar's Cove. California just ain't the mellow place it once was. On second thought, don't return to earth. Catch us on the rerun." She sighed, adjusting her hip for some comfort.

  Eric laughed again, clapped his hands in appreciation. "I can't wait to read your book on this whole experience when we get off of here someday. A combination of Franz Kafka and Woody Allen."

  "Well, I can't believe you actually told him we'd consider his scheme."

  "Why not? It makes sense. We help out, in a purely advisory capacity, and get a free ride up to Santa Barbara on his ship. That alone will save us a lot of paddling. Think about your scabby little knees kneeling in that canoe for a few more days, paddling until your arms ache as if they'd been gnawed on by an alligator."

  "Sweet talker."

  "And with your hip, it'll be even worse. Plus we get as much fresh food as we want and the choice of weapons from the cache. There might be a few things there to help even the odds against Fallows and his bunch."

  "I want to free Timmy, too, Eric, but-" Tracy started to protest when someone knocked on the door.

  "Who is it?" she asked.

  "Nurse Havczech. Got something for you."

  Eric tilted the gun in his waistband for a fast draw, then opened the door.

  "Howdy," she said, walking into the room. With both hands she held a steaming mug which she offered to Tracy.

  Tracy leaned forward to take it, smelling the steam as she leaned back again. She made a face. "Thanks, but what is it?"

  "Don't ask, honey. It'll go down better that way."

  Tracy sniffed it again, wrinkled her nose. "You sure I'm supposed to drink this and not use it to scrub the bathroom tiles?"