Buzz Cut

by James W. Hall

  But his mouth still worked, his lips limber.

  "Poor powerless Butler, his mother working for a rich and famous man. It must have infuriated you. Seeing such wealth, not having any of it. It must've twisted you up inside. All that money so close, your mother so impressed by it, sucking up to it, doing anything she could to wheedle her way inside that mansion, and there you were, so poor, so sad and fucked over."

  "You're wrong. I didn't care about money. I still don't."

  "Yeah, then why do you steal it? Why go to all the trouble to show how smart you are, how clever? The smoothed-off quarters in the slot machines. Stealing the chips. No, you don't care about money. Not much you don't. You're fucking obsessed with money, Butler Jack. If you'd just had enough of it when you were growing up, maybe your mother would've loved you better. Maybe she would've stayed at home, given you what mothers are supposed to give. Maybe if you had enough of it right now, she'd take an interest in you. Give you a little of her sunshine."

  "Bullshit. That's your story, not mine. You're the one she ran away from."

  "Mine and yours, Butler. Both our stories. Same mother, same story. Lola is incapable of giving what either of us needed. But I was the lucky one. She ran away from me. If she'd stayed, hell, I might've turned out like you."

  "Bullshit. You don't know what the hell you're talking about." His eyes fastened to Sugar's like the dark barrels of cocked pistols. A tremor had begun to show in his right cheek as if the nerves in his flesh were reawakening from a long slumber.

  "I know another thing too, Butler. And it's going to drive you fucking nuts. I know who your real father is."

  "You don't know shit. Not about me, not about anything." Butler narrowed the gap between them by another half step. He made a fist of his right hand and the blue spark crackled between his fingertips.

  "Morton and Lola," Sugar said. "They must've been going at it, banging away like goats for twenty years, sneaking around, doing it behind Irene's back. Took Lola that long to finally hook him, reel him in, get him to the boat. Oh, maybe he would've married her sooner, but he probably got nervous when he saw Lola's baby boy, how fucked up he was. Little Butler Jack. Shit, that probably set Lola's timetable back another ten years. It must have cooled old Morton's horniness considerably when he found out what a goddamn freak he'd fathered."

  "He's not my father."

  "Sure he is. He's Monica's father, and he's your father. Hey, we're all related. A half here, a half there. One big extended fucked-up family. And you're our pride and joy, Butler. Our mascot. The biggest fuckup of them all. Your own shrink tries to drown you. So dumb you can't even tell the difference between a water valve and a hydraulics valve. Can't even hold a job in a company your own father owns.

  "Only reason you aren't in jail right now is because Morton knew it was you stealing from him, and he took pity on you. He wanted me to catch you, be all nice and tender with you. Not bruise your ass. Morton and Lola think you're so pathetic and fucked up you couldn't hold a regular job, they just have to subsidize your little hobby. Let you keep on stealing from the cruise lines. But now even your own parents have had enough. They're cutting you off. And I'm the one doing the cutting."

  Butler's smile crumpled and a noise whuffed out of his mouth. He lowered a shoulder and rushed forward. And it was like the old days for Sugarman. The football days. Baiting the guy in the line across from him. Some guy who'd jabbed his finger in Sugarman's eye once too often down at the bottom of a pileup. Sugarman forced to tamper with the guy's head. Hup one, your mother's pussy is so big, hup two, it took six of us, hup three, before she knew she was getting fucked, hike. And the guy lowered his shoulder, doing what his blood told him, not what his coaches had been drilling into him for five hot months. Driving forward, completely off-balance, and all it took was a hand on his ribs, a simple push and Sugar was around him and gone. Catching his touchdown pass.

  Butler came like that, the knife waving, the voltage sputtering at his fingers, and Sugar kept himself planted, calm and focused, until he could taste Butler's breath, smell his angry sweat, and he sidestepped right, dragged a foot behind, tripped him, slapped a hand on his back and shoved him on his way. Butler pitched forward, head banging the metal door of a storage closet.

  Sugar gave him a moment to turn his face around. And there it was, that frozen second of time, hanging, waiting for Sugarman to act. All he needed.

  Sugar drew back his arm. Looking into his little brother's lifeless eyes. The moment inflating, the headlights shining bright, making him squint, a half second that lingered for minutes, long enough to mire himself in the pluses and minuses, the moral complexities and psychological fucking ambiguities of his action. But he didn't let it happen this time. Didn't think. Just hesitated that half second then let his body do what it had been trained to do when attacked by felons and crooks, robbers and bandits, muggers and killers.

  Sugarman let it fly, cracked a forearm across his brother's face, and instantly a dark jelly began to well from Butler's mouth and nostrils. Sugar clamped a hand on each of his brother's wrists and spread them wide, pinned them to the wall.

  Growling, Butler squirmed hard, ducked his head, lunged and tried to take a bite from Sugar's face. Teeth clacking an inch from the tip of Sugar's nose. And reflexively, Sugarman kneed him in the crotch.

  Butler's face went slack. The nerve pathways overloaded for that moment, the circuitous trail from nuts to brain jammed with bad news. A second passed, two, then Butler howled. Bellowed totally out of proportion to the force of the blow. So Sugarman tried it again, purely as an experiment, to find out if he'd heard right. Slammed his knee a second time and then a third, Butler shrieking now, sobbing. The dagger dropped away.

  Sugar released the left wrist, yanked the right one down with both hands, forcing Butler into an awkward stoop. Holding him there, Sugarman tore lose the zapper contraption, ripped the wires from Butler Jack's sleeve, pulled loose the battery pack from his belt. With his hip, he mashed Butler against the metal door. Butler was panting hard, sobbing between gasps.

  Sugarman ripped the last of the small wires loose, then got hold of his wrists again, spread him wide and pressed him flat against the door, and drew his right leg back to let Butler see what he was going to do, the kid closing his eyes, wincing, saying, no-o-o-o, a ghostly plea.

  And Sugarman let his knee go, gave him another thud. This time got his kneecap so deep into his brother's groin it probably made acquaintance with his larynx.

  Not something he should have done. A violation of his own strict rules. Crossing the line from self-defense into the realm of torture, punishment. But doing it anyway. Doing it for Emilio Sanchez and Dale Jenkins and for Dorfman and David Cruz and spry old women everywhere, and for any others he hadn't found out about yet. Doing it to free himself finally and forever from the plaster cast he'd been trapped in for these last weeks.

  Totally wrong. Something he knew he would deeply regret tomorrow, the next day, the rest of his life. He would have to live with the shame. Torture, revenge.

  But at that precise moment he felt fine. At that moment, slamming his knee into his brother's crotch, he felt fucking wonderful.

  ***

  Thorn had to drag Sugarman away. He was going about his business in a passionless, mechanical way, kneeing Butler Jack. Kneeing him again. Butler apparently unconscious, pinned to a storeroom door, while Sugar exacted his retribution.

  Thorn had to use all his strength to muscle him off, and even then it was only because Sugar decided to yield that he was able to do it. Thorn left him standing there over Butler's body while he stepped away and scooped up the dagger.

  Butler lay bleeding from the mouth and nose, his body sprawled across the hallway, head cocked up against the wall. Nose starting to swell.

  "Berserk," Sugarman said. "I went berserk. He came at me and I slammed him into the wall and held him there while I kneed him in the nuts. I lost it. I lost control. Berserk."

  His eyes wer
e glassy and he looked off into a pocket of air above Thorn's head and asked Thorn if he remembered the word berserk. Thorn said yes, yes, he did.

  Sugar said, "Running without their bear shirts into enemy lines. The Vikings. That's where it's from. The fucking Vikings. Warriors of the first order. That's how I felt."

  "Thank God for the Vikings."

  Sugar slumped against the wall. His face seemed shrunken and his flesh had lightened to a ghastly yellow as if his blood had retreated to those secret places where blood goes when the brain has had enough of the world's pain, enough of sight and smell and self-analysis, the blood stealing away with its bright treasure of oxygen, leaving the pulsing tangle of gray matter to gasp and sputter and fend for itself, leaving Sugarman to wither to the deck in a breathless heap beside the creep who did not deserve to be called even half his brother.

  CHAPTER 31

  His Day-Glo pink shirt darkened with perspiration, McDaniels came huffing down the corridor of the Crew Deck as Sugar was swinging open the door to the ship's single jail cell. Thorn held on to Butler Jack, a rigid armlock, probably shoving it harder than he needed to, forcing the cartilage to pop, maybe tearing a tendon or two. About half a pound of pressure away from wrenching the fuckhead's arm out of the shoulder socket.

  Thorn stepped up alongside Sugar and McDaniels, lurching Butler forward, and the four of them peered into the cell.

  "Looks like my cabin," said McDaniels. "Only bigger."

  The brig was a ten-by-ten steel box with welded seams and a single recessed light in the ceiling, the bulb covered by a steel cowling. No furniture, no cot, not even a mattress. Hard time at sea. Positioned at eye level in the thick steel door there was a foggy square of viewing glass with embedded silver reinforcing wire.

  "Whatta you think, buttface?" said Thorn. "Comfy enough for you?"

  Butler Jack rolled his head up off his chest, gave Thorn a bloody stare.

  Thorn handed Butler off to McDaniels, then he and Sugar stepped inside the cell and began to bang on the walls with their saps, testing the floor, the ceiling. When they were satisfied it was secure, Sugar shut and locked the door on Thorn to see if he could rattle the hinges from inside. No way.

  "Must've been expecting Jack the Ripper," Sugarman said as he set Thorn free.

  "Well, now they got him."

  McDaniels shoved Butler inside the vault, and he stumbled across the room and collapsed in the far corner. He lifted his head and broke into a gloomy grin. When he spoke, his voice had the parched and raspy sound of a man gagging on sand.

  "Regere," he said. "Latin. Where regal comes from, regency. Ruler. Rex and rector and reign. And surge, which combines sub with revere and means to come up from below. Which is what great men do. Kings and emperors surge to the top. Also rectus, which means straight, which is the source of rector, rectitude, and rectum, 'where the intestines become straight.' Surge and straight. The leader who will reign over you shall rise from below, surge straight upward from a low position and one day shit on your heads. That's who I am. That's who you're dealing with. Rex, the king. The monarch. You can push me down, but I'll be back where I belong very soon."

  "King of the assholes," Thorn said.

  "Fuck you," Butler Jack hissed. "You can't keep me locked up. I'm the blue haze that seeps under your door at night. Go on, try it. You'll see. I'll be there beside your bed when you wake. You'll see. You can't lock me away. I'm Rex. I'm surging up from below."

  "Well, you got a long fucking way to surge," Sugarman said, "before you get up here with us human beings."

  Sugar slammed the door and locked the three deadbolts, peered into the cell briefly then stepped away. He was angrier than Thorn had ever seen him. His pulse throbbed in the dark blue veins and tributaries that mapped his temple. His eyes were bloodshot and seemed to be skating aimlessly.

  McDaniels located a chair in a storeroom down the corridor and dragged it back. He sat down, holding his leather blackjack in his lap. In his wild hula girl shirt, yellow socks, and black sandals he looked like a bouncer at a nightclub for utter nincompoops. He smiled up at Sugarman and told him not to worry, they should go do what they had to do.

  "Don't open that goddamn door till we're back and ready to take the fucker ashore. Not for anybody. Not Sampson, not Gavini, nobody goes in there."

  "Don't worry. The monarch of the assholes himself could come marching up in his shit-brown robe, I wouldn't let him in." He threw Thorn a giddy smile.

  "And watch out for the blue haze too," Thorn said.

  Sugar drew the knife from his belt and extended it to the old soldier. McDaniels took it, pressed his thumb to the blade.

  "You think it's wise, getting our fingerprints all over a murder weapon?"

  "I think we're a long way past that." Sugar patted McDaniels on the shoulder and left the man chewing attentively on his straw.

  Thorn and Sugar went back to the chapel. After a quick debate on who should do the honors, Thorn hauled himself up into Butler's nest, had a peek at the tight quarters. An odd clash of high tech and primitive that reminded Thorn of the cockpit of one of the early space modules.

  An array of very sophisticated looking electronic gadgets and circuitry was wired into the bundle of cables overhead, while all around the small work area were exposed plumbing pipes and the aluminum ductwork of the air-conditioning system. Butler had fashioned a plywood floor and covered it with a thin rubber mat and pillow. Beside the pillow was a fancy telephone. The operating space itself was so cramped it was hard to imagine a man Butler Jack's size squirming into it. But he had. Mr. Blue Haze.

  When he dropped back down to the floor, Murphy was standing beside Sugarman. He gave a little bounce of excitement.

  "I'm next," he said, flashing his eager smile.

  "What's going on upstairs?" Thorn asked him.

  "Nothing much. TV show is still going on. Bev Mitchell and her three whores."

  "Ho's," Sugarman said.

  "That's what I said, whores."

  "Going on like nothing ever happened," Thorn said. "Wow."

  "It's television," said Sugarman. "No attention span."

  Thorn boosted Murphy to the ceiling and he chinned himself the rest of the way into the crawlspace. A minute later he poked his head out.

  "Holy moley," he said. "I gotta hand it to him. The guy had it all figured out. He's got a circuit board spliced into the main rudder control line, looks like it's the brains of an autopilot control panel. If he's got it programmed right, it could steer the ship right to a piece of ocean the size of a postage stamp a thousand miles from here. Once it was switched on, there was nothing anybody could do to shut it off, override it or anything except track it down, cut it out. He's got a VCR, a twelve-channel telephone, enough food and water for a week."

  "His little Ritz-Carlton," Thorn said.

  "VCR? Why the hell would he want a VCR" Sugarman helped Murphy lower himself back to the chapel floor. The effort left Sugar breathless and he had to sit on the front-row pew.

  "Maybe he wanted to watch some old Disney films," Murphy said. "I read that somewhere. There's a high correlation between serial killers and early exposure to Disney cartoons."

  Thorn stared at the kid. "Get outta here."

  "No, I read it somewhere. Ted Bundy, Dahmer, all those guys had four things in common when they were kids. Bedwetting, torturing animals, setting fires, and Disney movies. That's the profile."

  "He read it somewhere," Sugarman said. "It's got to be true."

  "Maybe you ought to offer Murph a job. Guy's got an impressive command of criminal justice trivia."

  Sugarman was peering down at a stain on the tan carpet just in front of the pulpit. A spray of blood that was shaped like a small stingray. Another bloody spritz marked the front of the oak pulpit as if someone had snapped a wet paintbrush from an inch away.

  "What about that telephone?" Sugarman said. He continued to study the shadow of blood, his voice at half power.

  "What abo
ut it?"

  "Why the hell would he want a phone? Who would he call?"

  "Order a pizza?" Murphy offered, grinning.

  Thorn said, "Maybe he was going to ring up the networks back in the U.S., the TV people, get some publicity going for his fucked up cause. Get his name on the airwaves."

  "Maybe so," Sugar said, staring at the polished brass crucifix on the wall behind the pulpit. "Yeah, maybe so."

  ***

  Thorn took his time wandering back to his cabin. Eavesdropping on snippets of nervous conversations, passengers getting very antsy to go ashore, not sure exactly what was going on. The printed schedule said they should've been on land an hour ago. But so far the ship was still at anchor.

  He knew these people now, had met their kind before when they'd wandered mistakenly into the unpredictable Keys. They were infected with the theme park virus, its major symptoms being an impatience for anything not on the prepackaged itinerary. For them the cruise ship was locked onto rails, riding its reliable route, skimming above a five-inch simulated sea. They wanted safety and predictability. They wanted to be assured in advance exactly what kind of fun they could expect, what clothes they'd need, who to tip and how much. They came in herds to Miami International, followed a smiling hostess in the cruise ship uniform with her upraised sign. Their luggage was transferred automatically. They rode a bulletproof bus across the city, wound through the cattle guards and boarded the ship exactly on schedule. They were old and wanted a neatly organized program. They were young and wanted to get exactly their money's worth.

  When they disembarked in Jamaica or Nassau or Cozumel, they moved in herds along preprogrammed routes. If any of them chanced to wander off, encounter some unseemly reality, a grubby unwashed child playing in the ordinary dust, some tavern filled with genuine roughnecks, they would no doubt scurry back to the group with wild tales of poverty and danger. That's another thing the theme park disease did. It trivialized everything evenly. The pleasure, the awe, the terror. Made the authentic into just one more carnival ride.