The cutthroat w-2

by Jason Frost

  "That's awfully nice of them to have built this," Tracy said, as Blackjack helped her over the side onto the dock.

  "They don't do anything around here to be nice. It's here to bring in customers. Period."

  Eric slipped the compound bow over his shoulder, adjusting the quiver of arrows on his hip. It wasn't as nice as his old bow, but it would do.

  Blackjack gave a few last-minute instructions to his crew, then vaulted over the railing, his saber jangling against his leg. "Let's go have some fun, shall we?"

  They wrangled their way through the crowded docks bustling with people loading and unloading cargo from their ships. Some brought bound women, hefting a woman over one shoulder and a sack of grain over the other. Two sailors wrestled with a reluctant cow that refused to walk down the gangplank, pausing instead to relieve its bowels.

  There was no consistent fashion as to what people wore. Men and women alike wore the uniforms of scavengers, mismatched scraps of whatever they could find. A suede jacket, once worth eight hundred dollars, was worn over a too-large polyester shirt that had brought in $8.99 to J. C. Penney. The one consistent item they all wore was a weapon, their hands never straying too far from the butts of revolvers, the hilts of knives. All eyes were at once suspicious, fearful, predatory.

  The ships that crowded the docks were of all sizes and shapes. Rowboats hugged against schooners, catamarans nosed between yachts. Some boats were homemade hybrids, designed to accommodate whatever materials were on hand, with homemade sails fashioned from tarps stitched together.

  The dock bounced and swayed in the water as Tracy, Eric, and Blackjack nudged their way through the bustling people. Occasionally someone would fall off the side of the dock, into the water or onto a ship, but people acted as if that was to be expected. One man elbowed past Tracy, each hand gripped tightly around the throat of two squawking chickens. A cloud of feathers from their flapping wings puffed into her face and made her sneeze.

  "There," Tracy said, waving the feathers away with one hand and scratching her nose with the other. "Over there on the first dock."

  Eric and Blackjack followed her nod. Icicles sprouted in their stomachs at the recognition. There was no mistaking the ship lashed alongside the first dock.

  The Centurion.

  ***

  "It's like something out of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," Tracy said in wonderment as she looked around.

  "It is amazing," Blackjack agreed, "no matter how many times you come here."

  "God, it's like those bazaars in Marrakech or somewhere. You expect to see snake handlers any second now."

  Eric didn't say anything. He watched; he studied. Tracy was right, though. Whatever Hearst Castle looked like before the quake, it had since been transformed into a giant marketplace crowded with jostling, sweating, dirty people, each with something to buy, sell, or trade.

  "This is the courtyard of Casa Grande," Blackjack explained. "Casa Grande's that big four-story mother there. That's where old William Randolph used to hump Marion Davies, when he wasn't having Clark Gable over for the weekend." He pointed to various areas beyond the building. "Over on the other side are a few more mansions. One's a whorehouse now, the other two are kinda like hotels. That's where Rhino and Angel will be staying while they're here."

  Tracy nodded. "Casa del Sol, Casa del Monte, and, uh, Casa del something. Oh yeah, Casa del Mar. They were all built as guesthouses."

  Eric turned to look at her. "I didn't know you were a Hearst Castle buff."

  "I'm not. I'm court artist, remember? I got my start with Patty Hearst's trial when they shot up that sporting goods store. I used to sit in that courtroom and sketch her, thinking how, except for a couple hundred million dollars, there wasn't much difference between us. A couple of Homecoming Queen-types trying to… I don't know… matter." She glanced off into the lush green hills surrounding them. "Anyway, I've been here a dozen times to study the art works. The place is a kaleidoscope of art treasures."

  "Yeah, well, when the present occupants are done, it'll be a kaleidoscope of junk."

  Street vendors were shouting at passers-by, hawking their wares with a festive enthusiasm.

  "Am-mu-ni-tion!" one bald man with a black mustache shouted. "We make ammo for almost any gun. C'mon in here and check us out." A line of people with various guns formed around the open-air booth. It was like a carnival, Eric thought, remembering the last one he'd been to. A Fireman's Fish Fry and Carnival. The kids ate corn dogs, then insisted on immediately riding the Twister. Afterward the corn dogs were deposited on the grass in a mushy heap.

  While the bald man gathered potential customers, a teenaged version of the man hunched over a Corbin Swaging Press, turning a.22 Long Rifle case into a.224-caliber bullet for a woman in a red hunting cap clutching a Mini-14. A spool of copper refrigeration tubing was coiled on the ground next to the press, soon to be turned into bullet casings.

  Next door to him a fat woman in a cowboy hat was gluing feathers to shafts, while an even fatter woman fastened nocks onto the ends of the arrows. "We got arrows," she barked to no one in particular. "Reasonable prices." She saw Eric looking at her and spoke directly to him. "Fletching is real turkey feathers, mister."

  Eric inspected the feathers, tossed them back down on the table. "Pigeons."

  She threw her hands up and cackled out a laugh that had people turning to see what the noise was. "Pigeons is right," she said, and cackled again.

  Next door to this booth was a shoe repair shop. An old man with quivering hands and a kindly face did his best to patch up shoes and sneakers. Some customers he turned away, unable to help, always giving them a sad smile of apology. Eric noticed the faded blue numbers tattooed on the underside of his wrist and felt a sharp pang of humility. Here was a man who had survived the concentration camps of Germany and who was surviving still, offering good humor to those around him. Of all the sights he'd seen so far in Liar's Cove, this one impressed him the most.

  "Those guys with the Hearst Castle T-shirts," Blackjack said, tugging on Eric's sleeve, "those are the security force around here. They'll know Rhino and his gang and probably can tell us where to find them." He walked over to one of the security force, a skinny kid with a.22 Hi-Standard Durango revolver sticking out of the pocket of his corduroy pants. He wore a white T-shirt with an image of Hearst Castle on it and five stripes of dirt across the chest where he'd wiped his fingers. He was talking to a young girl, no older than fifteen, who wore a thin steak knife in her belt. Eric watched Blackjack talk to the kid, who grudgingly answered, anxious to brush the black man off so he could get back to the girl. But Blackjack wouldn't be brushed off. He kept smiling and talking, leaning his six feet four inches over the kid until he got what he wanted.

  "Bad news," he said, when he returned.

  "Is there any other kind around here?" Tracy asked.

  "Rhino and Angel are in the Main Vestibule."

  Eric shrugged. "So?"

  "So, that's where the guy who runs Liar's Cove is. The guy I was hoping we'd be able to avoid. You see all this scum around here?" He swept his hand in a wide arc. "Well, multiply it by a hundred and you get a feel for the moral level of BeBop."

  "BeBop?" Tracy laughed. "What's a BeBop?"

  "BeBop is the dude who decides who lives and dies in here. And his word is final."

  Eric started off toward the entrance to Casa Grande. "I guess it's time we met him. And he met us."

  15.

  Howling laughter rumbled through the building as they squeezed their way through the rowdy crush of bodies. Most of the people in Casa Grande were slurping from metal cups.

  "What are they drinking?" Tracy asked Blackjack. "Smells like gasoline."

  "Close," Blackjack said. "A home-brew that BeBop cooks up himself. I once saw him drink a quart of it, then pour the rest into an empty motorcycle and drive it around the courtyard. I wouldn't give two cents for any of their livers a year from now."

  A drunken woman wearing a Pad
res' baseball cap leaned over Tracy's shoulder and laughed. "Man, who cares what happens a year from now." She drained the contents of her cup and sprayed it through her lips straight up into the air. It rained back down in her face and she laughed again before disappearing into the boiling crowd.

  "This is a little like some fraternity parties I've attended," Tracy said. A stricken look crumpled her face. "Oh no. Look at that." She pointed to a couple standing by an ornate doorway. The man was carving a big heart in the column with his knife. The girl giggled coyly, flipping a curtain of long, greasy hair over her shoulder. "Jesus, stop him. That doorway is solid marble, created by Andrea Sansovino, a sixteenth-century Florentine sculptor." They watched as the man continued to jab his knife at the marble, chipping and scratching his crude heart with wobbly initials.

  "It's too late to try to save this place," Eric said softly.

  "Yeah, you're right," she said, forcing a smile. "But I'll bet you're impressed by what I know for a change, huh?"

  "I am," Blackjack said.

  Eric winked at her and she smiled broadly as she limped ahead, pleased. The information wasn't medicine or survival, just the most useless of fields in this crazy world: art. But still, it was all hers. Something she knew that they didn't. Something she could be proud of.

  As they pushed their way closer to the Main Vestibule, the pounding beat of music wafted to them.

  "Somebody's beating that guitar within an inch of its life," Blackjack said.

  "Do you play?" Tracy asked him, shouting to be heard above the noise.

  "I know three chords. Enough to play twenty-three verses of 'Louie, Louie.'"

  "That sounds like two more chords than whoever's playing knows," Eric said.

  Finally they wedged through the arms and legs of the multipede blob of stinking bodies into the Main Vestibule. Standing in front of a magnificently carved fireplace mantel, his leg up on a squat black table, stood a bony man of about thirty. He wore a poncho made from a large American flag, a slit cut in the middle for his head, the field of stars flapping against his blue-jeaned shins. His feet were bare. He was whacking the guitar with broad strokes, singing loudly, a mouthful of braces reflecting light.

  "I don't care what people say, rock 'n' roll is here to stay." Behind him a kid about thirteen banged on a set of drums in a haphazard rhythm that ignored the song they were both singing.

  "That's BeBop on guitar," Blackjack explained. "The kid on the drums is his, uh, protйgй. Calls him Tsetse, like the fly."

  Eric nodded, then directed their attention to the corner of the room, where Rhino and Angel were standing, flanked on all sides by some of their crew from The Centurion. A couple of crew members were slurping from metal cups. Rhino tugged restlessly on the rubber band around his wrist. Angel watched BeBop's performance with piercing eyes, like a chef studying a pheasant it was about to carve. It was the only look she had.

  Abruptly, BeBop stopped hammering the guitar and waved a hand at the drummer to stop too. Everyone applauded dutifully, whistling and yelling. BeBop took a deep bow, turned his back to the crowd a moment, flipped up his poncho, and began pissing into the fireplace.

  Tracy shook her head. "That sixteen-foot high fireplace he's pissing into is from the French Renaissance. The marble busts surmounting it are by, uh…"

  "Francois Duquesnoy," Eric finished.

  She looked up at him, trying not to show her annoyance. "Figures. It goddamn figures."

  He slipped an arm around her waist and felt her lean into him, shifting weight from her bad hip. She felt good there.

  When BeBop had finished zipping his pants and turned around, everyone applauded again even louder. He flashed his mouthful of braces.

  "Hey, lookie, lookie," he said, pointing over the heads of the crowd. "It's my old buddy, Black Jack."

  "That's Blackjack, man. One word, like the card game."

  "Right, man. I didn't mean anything of a racist nature by it. After all, you're the guy who helped me concoct my world famous BeBop's Brew." He hoisted a metal cup and took a deep swig. Everyone cheered and did the same.

  Eric and Tracy turned curious eyes on Blackjack, who shrugged. "A little medicinal consultation. For a fee, of course."

  "Of course," Eric said.

  "What'd you come for this time?" BeBop asked. "Buying or selling?"

  "A little bit of both, maybe. Brought some customers."

  "Well, bring 'em on out here where I can get a look at them."

  Eric and Tracy stepped away from the crowd. Blackjack hovered behind them, his hand resting idly on the hilt of his saber.

  "Who are you?" BeBop asked, his pale blue eyes out of place in his dark-featured face.

  Blackjack answered for them. "Eric Raven-smith and Tracy Ammes. They're with my crew now," he said, turning to face the whole crowd, "so I don't want anybody to try to cheat them."

  "Ravensmith, huh?" BeBop said. "I've heard something about you. Can't remember what."

  "Savvytown," Rhino said from his corner. His face was contorted with anger, his one black eye shimmering under the overhang of twisted flesh.

  "Right, right. You're the dude that went in there and smashed the joint up. Yeah, I remember now. Slick piece of work. You don't plan to try that here, do you?" BeBop was grinning around his braces, but the cold look in his eyes was unmistakable.

  "No," Eric assured him. "That was personal."

  "Okay, then let me lay out the rules here at Liar's Cove. They're my rules and they aren't up for negotiation. You follow them, fine. You break them, you're dead. No exceptions. With me so far?"

  "Go on."

  "Any business transaction that takes place anywhere on the premises is taxable. That means I get ten percent for providing the place. You can only buy food here from my kitchen. You can stay at my hotel over at Casa del Mar or you can visit my whorehouse at Casa del Sol. We got men, women, children, or any combination you can think of. And before you get the wrong idea, I don't run them. They rent the rooms from me and give a percentage. Nobody's forcing them to do anything. They want to leave, they can walk out of here today." He grinned, his mouth twinkling metal. "Hell, I've got a fucking waiting list over there anyway. That should give you plenty of room to conduct whatever business you came here for. My security force is here to keep the violence at a minimum. I don't make any money if you people end up killing each other, so unnecessary violence will not be tolerated. You have to think of this place as a new concept in the shopping mall. The only restriction is in this building, Casa Grande." He gestured grandly as if to encompass the whole building. "It's got some one hundred rooms, including basements, vaults, thirty-seven bedrooms, and forty-one bathrooms. Put the whole thing together and you got seventy-three thousand five hundred ten square feet, almost one and a half times the size of a football field. And it's all mine. Other than the first floor, the rest of this house is off limits, man. This is where I do my Orson Welles impression. Dig?"

  Eric nodded.

  "Too bad my mom couldn't be around to see me now," he said, addressing the crowd. He'd gotten used to speaking to large groups and seemed to prefer it rather than one-on-one conversations. "After all, it's thanks to her I'm here. She used to be head tour guide here for years." He pointed at the Hearst Castle T-shirt one of his security guards was wearing. "We had five boxes of those T-shirts in our garage. Factory seconds the gift shop couldn't sell. We had a Hearst Castle clock in the living room, Hearst Castle dishes in the kitchen." He sat on the edge of the squat black table, absently strumming the guitar. "This place supported both of us while I played soft rock in Holiday Inns on weekends. John Denver shit. 'Play "Rocky Mountain High," ' written in lipstick on cocktail napkins with a dollar bill attached. Same old shit." He leaned the guitar against the table, waved the young drummer over. "Bring the medicine bag, Kid," he said.

  The young boy grabbed a child's lunch bucket with cartoon figures of Donnie and Marie Osmond painted on the lid. In his other hand he carried a thin pole. He wor
e a fisherman's hat that was stuck through with dozens of what looked like hat pins. He handed the lunch pail to BeBop, who opened it, dabbed some white powder on the tip of his thumbnail, and snorted it up his nostril. Then he closed the pail and handed it back. He turned to Eric with a crooked grin. "Hey, Ravensmith, you or your chick wouldn't happen to be a dentist, would you? I can't seem to get these damn braces off."

  "Sorry, can't help you," Eric said.

  "Well, that's what I get, trying to straighten my teeth at my age. Show business, you know?"

  "Listen, BeBop," Rhino suddenly said, stomping forward from his group. Angel tried to stop him, but he shrugged her off.

  Eric saw Griffin follow Rhino forward; he was carrying Eric's crossbow.

  Rhino shook a delicate finger at BeBop. "I want this Ravensmith and Blackjack. They've caused me considerable business setbacks."

  "How so?" BeBop asked.

  "Well, they tried to destroy my ship, killed several of my crew."

  BeBop smiled. "Since that forced you to come here for supplies and repairs and to recruit more crew members, they actually did me a favor. I'm turning a profit on the deal."

  "I don't give a damn about your profit," Rhino bellowed, snapping the rubber band against his thick wrist. "I want them. So if it's profit you want, I'll buy them from you."

  BeBop arched his eyebrows in surprise. "Now there's an offer I haven't had before. Pirates buying other pirates. What should I say to that, Ravensmith?"

  Eric smiled. "I'd ask him how much he's offering."

  BeBop laughed and the crowd joined in, toasting Eric. "Okay, then, Rhino, what's your offer. How much for the three of them?"

  "I'll give you their ship and all its contents."

  "I could take that myself if I wanted to. But then how many customers would come here to do business if they didn't feel safe. No, Rhino, I'm afraid whatever conflict you have with the doctor and his friends will have to wait until you leave Liar's Cove."

  "I want him!" Rhino yelled, his lumpish body trembling with energy and rage.