Blind Spot

by Tom Kakonis

  No time for headaches. He skirted the edge of the crowd, flicked a salute at the guard (who let him pass without a word: least his jacket for bein’ somebody you don’t dick with, somebody carries some weight around here, least that still stood up), ducked under the gate and sprinted through the lot. His van was parked in the visitors section, way they’d arranged. Next to it was the black Lincoln. Black as night. Called to mind a hearse, undertaker inside, measuring you with his eyes. He slowed down, pulled in some quick, shallow breaths. Came around to the passenger’s side and climbed in. Mumbled a greeting.

  “You’re late, Jimmie.”

  “Yeah, I know. But we got us a little snag in there.”

  Dingo’s brows went up, then tightened in a frown. “What kind of snag this time?”

  “Remember that goddam citizen I told ya about, one with the flyers, got the kid’s picture on it?” Jimmie said, not pausing for answer, speaking very rapidly, as though he was bent on getting through a jumble of thoughts, spilling them out, afraid of losing even a single one to interruption. “He’s inside the plant right now. Nosin’ around. I seen him. He gets to that polack—or his wife, polack’s I’m sayin’, she’s here too—he gets to either of ’em and we’re ass deep in crocodiles.”

  “That would be alligators,” Dingo said quietly.

  “Huh?”

  “The word is alligators. For the A sound. Ass deep in alligators.”

  “Okay, alligators. Either way, could be bad news for us.”

  “Bad news is not what I wanted to hear this morning, Jimmie.”

  “Hey, take a number. Don’t exactly mellow me out, tellin’ ya.”

  “My understanding was that you had this problem—what you choose to call a ‘little snag’—resolved.”

  “I did!” Jimmie protested. “Least I thought I did. Figured no way this wimp gonna show up again. Not after the thumpin’ he took.”

  “Evidently you were mistaken.”

  “How’m I suppose to—”

  “Be still, Jimmie. I need a moment to think.”

  Dingo made a meditative steeple of his hands, peered through it, through the windshield, past the assemblage of vehicles glittering under a blaze of sun, and off into the urban rot on the horizon. His face was utterly without expression. His thoughtful moment lengthened. At last he said, “In business, Jimmie, there will always be obstacles that arise unexpectedly. In business you have to learn to be flexible. To treat them as challenges, accommodate them. Fold them into your plan, so to speak. These obstacles, I mean.”

  “So what’re you thinkin’ to do, this one?” Jimmie asked fretfully. Clock’s tickin’ and he’s gettin’ a goddam business lesson.

  Dingo reached over and flipped open the glove compartment. “There’s our solution to this particular obstacle,” he said.

  Jimmie’s eyes went buggy. Snubbie in there, couple butterfly knives. Some sensational solution. “You ain’t talkin’ an icein’ here?”

  “What else?”

  “Jesus, I dunno, Dingo. Tuneup’s one thing. But I ain’t never zapped nobody before. You know that.”

  “Actually, I didn’t.”

  “Well, I ain’t.”

  “Always a first time for everything, Jimmie.”

  “But you can’t take a piece inside there. Too many people around.”

  “I expect you’re right,” Dingo said. “For a change. We’ll use the knives.”

  He removed them from the compartment, dropped one in Jimmie’s lap, and slipped the other under his belt. Jimmie didn’t move. He stared at the knife, petrified. Didn’t trust himself to speak. All he could think of was the we he’d heard in there.

  “Pick it up, Jimmie.”

  “Look, Dingo, this ain’t my line. I just don’t—”

  Dingo laid a gentle finger on his partner’s lips. Gentle shushing gesture. “Not to worry,” he said, winter in his voice, sleet in his eyes. “I’ll show you how it’s done. And when it’s finished we’ll have a chat, you and I.”

  “ ’Bout what?”

  “Your breath, among other things. Come along, now. Time is short.”

  Astonishingly, no one challenged him. A few of the workers glanced up from their stations as he passed, ran incurious eyes over him, and turned away. Maybe it was the general racket, or the heat. Dumb luck, maybe. Whatever the reason, Marshall was not of a mind to explore it. If the directions were right, he was almost there. He kept moving.

  Everything about the place summoned an impression of weight, tonnage, a blackened, ugly burden laid on the back of the fragile green earth. Everything ponderous, bulky, larger than life, and noisier. And dangerous, it seemed, as the abundance of signs mounted on the soot-stained walls attested, relaying such redundant alerts as: MAKE EVERY MOVE A SAFE ONE. LET YOUR BRAIN KEEP YOUR HEAD FROM INJURY. THINK SAFETY. EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED. Messages to live by. Even the machines were massive and daunting, fashioned, to his wonderstruck eye, in shapes weird, surreal. Look at that one up ahead: a brace of rockets poised for liftoff, burping steam, issuing a sustained roar; or a gigantic onion peeler, maybe, straddling the crawling belt and skinning the slabs of metal that rolled beneath it. That would be the hot mill, if the old man told true. To the left of it should be an entrance opening onto another wing of the plant. And there it was. The machine shop, stretching back a full fifty yards or more.

  He took a cautious step inside. The din was of a different quality and pitch in here, its predominant sound a shrill, grating screak, some background clanking to it, hammering. Odors of oil and grease slicked the air. Along one wall a column of welders, showered in sparks, bent like surgeons over skeletal husks of metal. And on the other, in the corner just off the entrance, stood a boxy, windowless shed.

  Marshall approached it. A sign on the door identified it as the Tool Crib and warned all unauthorized personnel to keep out. Authorized only by the justice of his mission, its lawful rightness, authority in plenty for him, he burst through that door unannounced either by knock or query.

  And discovered a man of formidable size slouched on a stool, thick shoulders hunched, chin supported by a palm, gaze blankly fixed on the stone floor. The Thinker in blue twill. Meditating under the pale yellow light of an unshaded bulb dangling from the ceiling. Flanked on two sides by steel shelves stacked with the mechanical gadgetry of labor and backed by a wooden workbench strewn with tools. Startled by this sudden intrusion on his private precinct, he demanded, “Fuck’re you doin’ in here?”

  “Looking for you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. You.”

  “And who’d you be?”

  “You know who I am.”

  “What I know is you’re somebody who’s in a place he ain’t suppose to be. This area’s off limits to visitors.”

  Marshall pulled the door shut behind him. “You’re Mike Wazinski,” he said, a flat assertion of fact.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “They call you Waz.”

  “That’s right. Still waitin’ to hear what you’re doin’ here.”

  “I want you to tell me where my son is.”

  “Dunno what the fuck you talkin’ about,” Waz declared, but the inward turn of his eyes gave him away, stamped the lie on his face.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “You ain’t wrapped too tight, are ya? Now get the—”

  “Just tell me, Mr. Wazinski.”

  Waz got to his feet and crossed the narrow space between them. He stood with his hands planted on his hips, jaw belligerently outthrust. Hostility pooled in his eyes. “What I’m tellin’ you,” he growled, “is to shag your ass outta here. Before I call security.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to do that,” Marshall said, looking steadily at this man looming over him, half again his size, bristling with toughness and latent force. He was conscious of his own hands going again, clasping and unclasping, as if to pump courage from the air. “I don’t think you’re going to call anyone. Not security. Not the police. No one.”<
br />
  “You don’t think so, huh?”

  “No.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because you know why I’m here.”

  “See that phone over there?” Waz said, indicating a beige half shell tacked to the wall above the bench.

  “I see it.”

  “All’s I gotta do is pick it up and you’re in the deep shit.”

  “Go ahead. Pick it up.”

  Waz hesitated. Glared at him. “Aah, you’re fuckin’ sick in the head. I ain’t gonna talk to you no more.”

  “Yes, you are,” Marshall said. He took a quick sideways hop. Blocked the door.

  “You gonna get outta my way there?”

  “No.”

  The last brawl Marshall could recall being in (apart from the beating he’d taken the other night, which hardly qualified as a fight) had occurred some two decades ago, some truculent bully goading him into a playground tussle that commenced with an exchange of insults, advanced to threats, erupted in cuffing fists, and culminated in a sprawled tangle of legs and wildly flailing arms, disentangled finally (fortunately for him, his stamina and will draining fast) by some officious schoolmarm. Except for the absence of a scolding angel of deliverance and an expanse of grass and blue sky, this one was not much different. This bully seized him by the shoulders, spun him around, laid a flat hand in his tender face, and sent him reeling into one of the shelving units, from which he pushed off, lunged, wrapped his arms around the broad torso, and tugged it away from the door. They grappled, lurching this way and that, now forward, now back, into the shelves, into the bench, locked in furious embrace, like some goofy, twittery dance choreographed by a drunk. Into the stool it took them, this staggery waltz, toppled them to the floor, tumbling across the stone, Waz, by virtue of his vastly superior strength, emerging on top, pinning him with his bulk, pummeling him with his fists.

  Marshall could feel blood squirting from his nostrils and mouth. He thrust a forearm over his face, feeble effort to deflect the heavy blows. He flung the other arm out to one side, grasping for something to serve as a weapon. Anything would do. His hand clutched some object, indistinguishable but weighty, and he swung it in a wide looping arc, the apex of which was the Wazinski skull, the impact sufficient to terminate the pounding and to wrench a chugging grunt from his antagonist, followed by a stiffening, followed by a loose-limbed slump.

  Marshall squirmed out from under him. He sucked in some hawking breaths, blinked the fog from his eyes. The object was still in his hand. He recognized it as an ordinary cordless power drill, but it looked curiously like some futuristic raygun, its plastic trigger crimson as the blood leaking from his face, its black barrel spectacularly elongated, its gold-tipped titanium bit a miniature bayonet. He looked at this Mike Wazinski, this bully, on his back now and groaning. Momentarily stunned. A moment is all that’s required, a voice as remote from his own as the voice of a visitor from a distant galaxy whispered in his ear. He scrambled over and straddled the mound of belly and lowered the spiraled tip of his raygun to the Wazinski throat, snarling toughly, “Goddam you, now you’re going to tell me.”

  Waz glared up the length of the barrel. “Tell you shit.”

  “Now! Or I’ll drill you right into this floor.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Marshall slid the bit over onto the rope of muscle sloping from neck to shoulder. He squeezed the trigger, and fragments of ragged flesh and shreds of blue cotton, perhaps a bone chip or two in there as well, rose on a geyser of blood. Waz’s scream spiked the air like a flashbulb burst. Marshall released the trigger and covered the widening twist of mouth with his free hand and rode the bucking torso till it was perfectly still, its spasms stopped, the scream run down. The eyes, the voice advised him, and that’s about what he said: “Tell me where he is or your eyes are next.”

  “Buck,” he gasped.

  “What? Speak up.”

  “Buck’s got him.”

  “Who’s Buck?”

  “Dale Buckley.”

  “Where is he? Is he here?”

  Waz shook his head no.

  Marshall elevated the drill, held it over him, and gave the trigger a quick warning squeeze.

  “Westmont. He lives in Westmont.”

  “Is he there now?”

  “I think so.”

  “You got a phone book here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where?”

  “Under the bench.”

  Marshall stood, backed warily over to the bench, stooped down, and produced the directory. “There better be a Dale Buckley in Westmont,” he said.

  There was. He ripped out the page and tucked it carefully in the pocket of his shirt. The trusty raygun he laid on the bench. Clearly no need for it anymore from the looks of his bloodied opponent, who lay there cringing, glazed with shock, clutching his lacerated shoulder.

  About that Marshall was wrong. He started for the door, but it swung open just ahead of him and two men stepped inside. Both of them stood squarely in his path. Both carried wicked-looking knives. One he recognized, the ambusher from the bar, splinter thin, crafting an attitude of menace compounded of scowl and sneer. The other, unknown to him, nattily suited, the glitter in his frosted green eyes softened by an expression of faint, almost charitable, amusement on his lips, shook his head slowly. “Well,” he said mildly, “appears to have been a little altercation here.”

  Marshall said nothing.

  “Is this the gentleman, Jimmie?”

  “That’s him. Figured he’d come here.”

  “Get the door.”

  Beans had elected not to work today, which left Lester alone in a corner of the box shop, listlessly nailing crates for the packing line and wishing there was somebody around to sling the shit with. The quiet he sought, or had claimed to Waz he sought, was welcome at first but soon enough grew oppressive. Little quiet go a long ways. Especially when you got a yantsy thought stowed in the back of your head, keeps creeping up front, won’t butt out no matter how you shoo it away.

  Wasn’t actually a thought so much as a nagging, vaguely guilty sensation of something undone, unsaid. He tried to penetrate it, frame it with words. Okay, you got a friend, been one a long time, years. Then you got this Quinn fella, barely know him. Sure, you can feel sorry for a guy like that, kid bagged and all, but you also got to ask yourself where your loyalties lie. Trouble was, he pretty much knew the answer, but he didn’t like it. Was like either way somebody got to eat the hurtburger, and both of ’em decent guys too.

  What he wished now was he’d never run into this Quinn, first place, never gone back behind the bar there to help him out, never said nothin’ to him about Waz, never give him a pass to the open house. Wished he had a redbird, get his head unswizzled. Wished he’d stayed home today. Wished he’d been born somebody else. Yeah, right, and if horse turds was doughnuts we’d eat till we died, or however that old saying went. Something about wishes and horses, forgot how the doughnuts got in there. Maybe because it was comin’ up on break time. Dr Pepper and a sinker go good about now.

  He put down his hammer and went out onto the plant floor, pointed for the vending machines. And as he ambled along, a notion gradually insinuated itself in his miseried head, evolved into a decision and resolved the conflict in there. If he hustled he could still get to Waz first, get square with him. The right thing to do? Fuck, he didn’t know no more. Least it might scrub away them smudges of guilt. Some of ’em anyways.

  He walked faster, broke into a trot. A grunt he passed called, “Hey, Cock, where’s the fire?” Lester ignored him. He came down the passageway along the rolling belt, turned into the machine shop, and hurried over to the crib. He paused for an instant, caught his breath, gathered his words. And then he came through the door, saying, “Hey, Wazzer, something I gotta—” And that was as far as he got.

  Jimmie whirled around and barked, “Lester, what the fuck you doin’ here?”

  Lester, goggle-eyed at what he saw—Waz on
the floor, moaning; Mr. Quinn backed up to a shelf, bleeding, boxed in by Jimmie and that Dingo dude, both of ’em packin’ shanks—mumbled, “Uh, just stopped by to see Waz.”

  “Nice sense a timing you got.”

  Frowns and incongruous grins chased each other across Lester’s extravagantly startled face. “Yeah, well, I’ll be leavin’ now,” he volunteered apologetically, more accurate than he could have known. Never could he have imagined that the terrible moment of his death had arrived at last. Nor guessed the manner of the death he was about to die. Dingo said to Jimmie, “Cover him,” meaning Quinn; and then he stepped over to Lester and drew the blade across his throat, a clean gash, ear to ear; and Lester, sporting the fatal wound like a scarlet secondary grin, slumped to the floor and died much the same way he had lived, without protest or fuss or bother.

  Like all deaths, Lester’s palliated life for someone else, Marshall in this instance. More even than palliated—salvaged, in fact.

  They had exchanged quick facial signals, advanced cautiously, circled him. The skinny one hung back a bit, his spindly shoulders tight, knife hand extended rigidly, as though in stiff formal greeting. Not so the other, who moved with the supple grace of a dancer, blade weaving like the head of a coiled serpent. A slow, expectant smile worked its way into his face. His eyes seemed to shimmer and spark.

  A dry terror constricted Marshall’s throat, shellacked his tongue. His arms felt leaden, his feet stapled to the floor. The raygun, abandoned in the presumptuous arrogance of a self-assured certainty, lay on the bench, tauntingly out of reach. Paralyzed, he watched them close in on him. The dancer’s blade split the air, speed of a laser, and opened a diagonal fissure from Marshall’s collarbone to his waist. Half of an X. He felt a stinging sensation, more prickly than painful. Warm emergent blood seeped around the edges of his ripped shirt.

  “That’s called a slice and dice,” the dancer informed him. “Know what a splatter platter is?”

  Marshall found enough voice to say simply, “No,” though he suspected he knew.