Haunted: Dark Delicacies® III

by Del Howison

  Better close the deal now, Son, Sharkey advised from the Great Beyond, ’fore somebody separates this fool from his pointy little head.

  But Sonny was curious.

  “Why can’t you go and get her yourself?” he said.

  “Mooother-fucker,” Nomo hissed.

  O-gazm spat on the floor.

  Rifkin flinched.

  “Yo, Black Superman, you ask a lotta dumb questions,” Nomo said.

  “Sit your stupid ass down, Mo,” Rifkin said.

  Nomo backed down. The Scrape peeled another paper towel and went to town on himself. Sonny winced.

  Sounds like sandpaper scratchin’ at dead wood.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Rifkin said.

  Sonny agreed and decided that he was officially ready to get away from these people.

  “Where was the last place you saw her?” he said.

  Rifkin shook his head. “She stole something from me,” he insisted. “Two weeks ago. I need it back.”

  “She s’posed to be dancin’ around the titty bars in the Loop,” Nomo said.

  “What’s her name?” Sonny said.

  “Her name is Harmony,” Rifkin whispered.

  “Harmony Tremontane.”

  * * *

  Twenty-seven hours later, Sonny was standing in the main room of the Shakedown, an upscale gentleman’s club off Rush Street, waiting for another hardbody to take her clothes off and trying not to puke.

  Innards were never the same after that last bout, Sonny thought. His stomach rumbled in agreement. These days, a night spent partying with a pint of Jim Beam always preceded a morning spent clutching the ky-bowl with one hand and a bottle of Maalox with the other.

  Seems you just about livin’ on J.B. and Maalox, Son.

  Sonny shook Sharkey’s voice out of his head, but he was staring at the bar, and his mouth was watering.

  Focus, he reminded himself.

  The dancer onstage swept up her cash and ran off to a smattering of applause.

  “This next young lady joins us after a whirlwind national tour of Oh! Calcutta!” the announcer said.

  You gotta be kiddin’, Sonny thought.

  “Men, let’s get it up for—Harmony Tremontane!”

  Sonny’s focus snapped toward the stage.

  The music started. The red curtain parted. Sonny stopped breathing.

  She was more than beautiful.

  Earlier, Nomo had told him that the Scrape’s woman was a slag: skinny, with faux-luscious breasts that looked ludicrous on her shriveled frame. But this Harmony Tremontane was tall, with lithe brown legs that swept her across the stage. Her thighs were full but taut. A red-gold Afro framed her face like a halo made of sunfire.

  “I’ll be … damned,” Sonny whispered.

  If anyone could steal something from a freak like the Scrape and survive, it would be a girl who looked like that.

  “Yep, that’s her,” one of the bouncers volunteered. “Harmony Tree-mon-taaane.”

  The bouncer was wearing a black T-shirt with the words “Does Not Play Well with Others” emblazoned across his seventy-five-inch chest.

  “I heard she did pornos out in La-La Land before she blew into Chi,” the bouncer said. “Very talented. You feel me, Troub?”

  The bouncer held up a hand in a high-five gesture, but Sonny was in no mood for camaraderie. Besides, he advocated rough disemboweling for anyone over thirty who didn’t have time to say “Chicago.”

  “But ain’t nobody gettin’ within a mile of that tonight,” the bouncer said. “She’s with Block Tokomatsu.”

  High-Five pointed a sausage-thick finger toward a table near the stage. Seated at the table were five of the biggest human beings Sonny had ever seen.

  Block Tokomatsu was a half-Japanese/half-Samoan player down from Milwaukee. He’d done a stretch out at Marion State Correctional on a murder-2 convic, plus stints here and there for all manner of antisocial activities.

  Block Tokomatsu regularly beat the melanin out of scores of brothers for light exercise. He doled out ass-whippings the way the Pope dispensed benedictions at Christmas: he was the Supreme Pontiff of the Righteous Beatdown.

  “Hey, Black Superman.”

  Sonny turned to find Nomo lingering like a bad fart.

  “That’s the homely bitch right there.”

  Homely? Sonny thought. Who’s he looking at?

  “Hold on a minute,” Sonny cautioned. But Nomo whipped out his wireless and pushed Send.

  “Yo, she’s here,” he said. “At the Shakedown. “He nodded, twice, and disconnected. He glared at Sonny with reefer-enriched rancor.

  “Scrape say you better do yo’ job,” he said. “Else I’m gon’ handle you like I shoulda handled your big ass back at the currency s’change.”

  Do it, the Troub urged in Sonny’s mind. Just reach over and pop that neck like a chicken bone.

  Sonny savored the fantasy for a moment and decided it wasn’t worth the shit storm that would follow. He needed to be shut of this crew like nobody’s bid, but there was still the matter of five-large-plus-expenses to settle before he could call it a night.

  “I’ll get her,” he rumbled, certain that this was all going to end badly. “And the word is ex-change, idiot.”

  While Nomo tried to figure out if he’d just been insulted, Sonny advanced toward the black leather hillock that was Block Tokomatsu’s back.

  Let’s do this.

  James Brown was extolling the virtues of being both Black and Proud via the state-of-the-art sound system. The DJ worked two turntables with one hand and a hard drive with the other, a digital rain dance that filled the Shakedown with hip-hop thunder. Relentless rhythm jiggled Sonny’s organs as he sat at a table behind Tokomatsu and his cronies.

  How the hell am I supposed to get her past all those big Samoans? he wondered.

  A bevy of the prettiest dancers adorned the Block’s table, laughing too loudly, casting fox-eyed glances in the Block’s direction even while they flirted with his lieutenants.

  Tokomatsu looked oblivious to the cold war of sexual innuendo being waged around him. He tracked Harmony’s every move, his eyes flickering between her and the main entrance the way a nervous pimp guards a hooker with her original teeth.

  What have you gotten yourself into? Sonny thought.

  Harmony finished her number six feet up the “fireman’s pole,” her legs spread wide, toes peaked in an exquisite dancer’s “point.” She slid to the floor, gathered up her cash, and vanished behind the red curtain. The lights changed and the mostly male audience erupted into a barnyard cacophony.

  A flash of silver drew Sonny’s focus down to the waistline of one of the Block’s lieutenants. A quick glance around the Samoans’ table confirmed the sinking sensation in his gut.

  They’re all strapped, he thought.

  Brute force was not going to get him around the Block.

  Gotta think, boy, Sharkey might have said. Can’t punch your way outta every fight.

  Sonny gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.

  Sixty seconds later he borrowed a pen from a passing loser, scribbled a note on a cocktail napkin, and handed it to one of the uglier waitresses along with a twenty for her troubles.

  Two songs died before the waitress returned and Sonny learned that his night was about to get a lot more complicated:

  Dear Shithead,

  Do the world a favor and blow your goddamn head off.

  H.

  Gotta do this the hard way then, Sonny thought.

  You don’t “gotta” do anything, Sharkey said in his head.

  Sonny waved the ugly waitress over again.

  “J.B. straight,” he said. “Make it a double.”

  The waitress nodded and waddled off.

  A few minutes later, Sonny was staring at a tall glass of the straight medicine, and marveling at how the overhead disco lights made the ice cubes twinkle.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said, even though it was July.


  He emptied the glass and gestured a cute little Korean import over.

  “Buy me a drink?” the stripper said.

  “Private dance,” Sonny rumbled. He got to his feet and the stripper’s eyes brightened.

  “Ooohh, you’re a big one,” she said. Then she smiled, straightened Sonny’s collar, and led him into the back room.

  Red lights and naked women were everywhere.

  In the corner off to Sonny’s right, two strippers were dancing for a man and his date, a redhead with no lips.

  “Like redheads,” Sonny said. Meanwhile, the animal crouching behind his eyes stood up and tugged on the bars of its cage.

  Wish Flake was here now, he thought, recalling the human piledriver and his unholy uppercut: the red thunderflash that blew out the last candle on Sonny Troubadour’s cake.

  Feed him his own damn ear he was here right now.

  Sonny sat on a red velvet chair and the stripper started to gyrate. “My name’s Douglas,” she said. “Twenty dollars for one dance?”

  “Okay,” Sonny said.

  He reached into his wallet and gave over.

  Then Harmony glided past his cubicle.

  Sonny shoved Douglas out of the way and stood up.

  “Hey, Hercules, no rough stuff!” she chirped.

  “Sorry, Doug,” Sonny said over his shoulder.

  He crossed the room in four strides and headed Harmony off at the bathroom door. She almost bumped into him before she looked up.

  “Well?” she said.

  Sonny grabbed her around the waist, swung her over his left shoulder, turned, and froze: about two dozen fake fornicators frolicked between him and the door.

  “Move!” Sonny bellowed.

  Strippers and suckers scattered like roaches.

  One girl screamed, then they all chimed in. High-Five, the bouncer from the front, appeared and blocked Sonny’s path.

  “Freeze, asshole!”

  Sonny uncorked a right cross that lifted High-Five out of his shoes and put his lights out before his ass hit the cheesy red carpet: the Troub was open for business.

  Move, he commanded. Move-move-move.

  Sonny kicked the exit door open and lunged into the alley. The woman hanging over his shoulder remained silent. She didn’t struggle or scream.

  Too scared, Sonny thought.

  When Nomo saw Sonny chugging toward him, he dropped his cigarette and jumped into the driver’s seat. Sonny threw open the back door, tossed Harmony inside, and dived in on top of her.

  “Goddamn, Black Superman!” Nomo said. “You take yo’ work serious!”

  A hail of bullets peppered the right side of the Cadillac. Sonny whirled to see the Block and his lieutenants stampeding toward them, firing as they came.

  “Drive!” he shouted.

  Nomo jammed the accelerator and laid a smoking trail of burnt rubber across Rush Street. He blew through a red light and headed toward State Street.

  “You’re goin’ the wrong way!” Sonny said. “Rifkin’s place is on the West Side!”

  “Rifkin don’t want Tokomatsu heatin’ up his territory,” Nomo shouted. “I’m takin’ her to another spot!”

  Sonny squinted as the headlight glare from the Block’s black Mercedes shrank his pupils. Adrenaline burned the alcohol haze from the surface of his brain. The fighter’s focus that once helped the Troub inflict brain damage on dozens of opponents cleared Sonny’s head in an atavistic attempt to save his ass.

  “You better drive like your nuts are on fire!” he said.

  “Don’t worry about my drivin’!” Nomo hollered. “You just keep Ol’ Yeller in check!”

  But Harmony was staring at the tenements whipping by. Nomo wrestled the Cadillac down the entrance ramp to a fuck-you chorus of blaring horns. While panicked drivers swerved and collided as Nomo shoehorned the Cadillac onto the expressway, Harmony studied her nails.

  Nomo thumbed a red switch on the steering wheel and ignited the illegal afterburners in the Cadillac’s engine. The ninety-second “bum” that followed punched Sonny into the leather seat cushions. Nomo left the black Mercedes on the far side of a snarl of crushed metal and bleeding citizens dwindling in the distance.

  “He’s wrong, you know,” Harmony said.

  “What?” Sonny said.

  Harmony smirked. “What’s mine is mine.”

  Sonny winced. He shook his head at the bloom of pain that blossomed behind his right eye.

  “You his woman?” Sonny said, trying to distract himself.

  Harmony sucked her teeth. “I’m nobody’s woman, fool.”

  “You ripped him off.”

  “I don’t steal.”

  The girl’s eyes flashed.

  Sonny shrugged. One thing was certain: once the Scrape had Harmony back in his camp, he’d never let her leave with her skeleton on the inside of her skin.

  Harmony shifted, moved closer—Sonny was uncomfortably aware of the heat from her body—and something, a squiggle of quicksilver, shimmered in the woman’s eyes.

  “What’s—” Sonny said. “Your eyes …”

  “You want some of this, fighter?” Harmony whispered. She reached up behind her neck and undid the straps of her bikini top.

  “Hey,” Sonny said. “Hey now …”

  Harmony let the top fall. “You’re the same as Rifkin,” she said.

  She’d been pretty a moment earlier, but the woman who faced Sonny now might have danced for kings instead of kingpins and dope slingers.

  “Your eyes,” Sonny said. “What are you doing?”

  Sudden, murderous desire ambushed his common sense. En-flamed, stupid with need, he reached for the stripper.

  “What the hell are y’all doin’ back there?” Nomo said.

  Sonny’s hand halted a hair’s breadth from the stripper’s thigh. Then something inside him flipped over and he puked onto the floor of the Scrape’s Cadillac.

  “Heeeyyy!” Nomo screeched. “Hey, motherfuckahhhh!”

  “What …” Sonny gasped. “What happened?”

  The air inside the Cadillac was suddenly too dry to breathe. Sonny’s vision doubled, then trebled, Harmony splitting into triplets as he watched.

  Nomo screeched. “Rifkin gon’ have my ass behind this, you big dumb bastard!”

  “Hush,” Harmony snapped.

  And something happened. Nomo shut his mouth and turned around. His head slumped forward onto the steering wheel.

  “Hey,” Sonny moaned, guts burning. “What’s goin’ on?”

  Harmony was staring at him as if he’d just appeared out of thin air. Her clothing was completely intact.

  “I—I—” Sonny stuttered.

  He looked out the window.

  They were sitting in an abandoned grocery store parking lot, but Sonny didn’t remember leaving the highway.

  “Lady, who the hell are you?” he said.

  Harmony’s smile slashed a bright afterimage across Sonny’s vision, like lightning gouging the spectral flesh of midnight skies.

  “That’s easy, Andrew,” she said, though he’d never told her his real name. “I’m your dream date.”

  It was then that Sonny noticed two small crystal vials dangling from a leather string tied around the woman’s neck. She fingered the vials as she spoke.

  “Why don’t we go someplace quiet?” she said. “Where I can show you what you’ve been dreaming about.”

  Sonny swallowed, cleared his throat. “Skank,” he said. “Parasite.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’re Rifkin’s whore,” Sonny snarled. “Or Tokomatsu’s. Either way, from what I can see, you ain’t worth the trouble.”

  Harmony laughed. The vials around her neck chimed. To Sonny, the chiming sounded like screams.

  “We’re not so different, you and me,” she said.

  Sonny shook his head, tried to clear his vision. Nomo slumped across the front seat like a marionette with its strings cut. The black walls of the Cadillac pressed closer, stifl
ing Sonny in leather and chrome.

  “You don’t know … anything about me,” he said.

  “I know you smell more like a distillery than a man,” Harmony said. “But it’s the smell of blood that made you what you are.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I know you sometimes wish that boy from New York had killed you dead rather than made you into the thing I’m lookin’ at now.”

  Harmony’s fingers stroked crystalline peals of anguish from the vials, each note an accompaniment to the agony in Sonny’s gut.

  “You drink to kill the despair, but you can’t,” she said. “You was bigger than this. Once upon a time you held power in your hand, power that set you above other men. Then the world moved on, left you bleedin’ in that ring, half-blind, too old and too stupid to get up.”

  “Stop,” Sonny said.

  Harmony leaned over and placed her left index finger on Sonny’s knee. “I can change all that,” she said. “I can take you to a place where the dead dance in fields of blood-red violets. Where the air is black with power and the earth is seeded with ashes.”

  Sonny shook his head. But he was standing at ringside and watching himself bleed.

  “I—I don’t want to seel,” he whispered.

  “Oh, but you do,” Harmony said. “I know that too.”

  Sonny hovered, a dark Icarus above the ghost world in her eyes. Then his wings took fire and he fell, burning, into its swirling atmosphere, captured by the gravity of her gaze.

  “Let’s go.”

  He had nothing left to lose.

  * * *

  “Don’t touch me.”

  They were lying on Sonny’s sofa in the living room of his one-bedroom apartment. The stripper stretched her leg over his chest and straddled him.

  Some instinct warned him at the last instant, and he tried to sit up. The woman set her hand at his throat and Sonny sensed the power to gut him tensed in her fingers.

  “I know what you want,” she said. “The smell of your dreams makes me want to puke.”

  Harmony reached back and undid his belt. She yanked at his pants as she held him down. Sonny bucked, trying to throw her off. Her nails cut deeper into the flesh of his throat.

  “We are alike,” she breathed. “I’m a survivor too.”

  The pupil of her right eye bulged outward, eclipsed both iris and sclera. In their place, a black orb shone wetly. There was a sound like the ripping of muscle, and a shock of red hair burst from her scalp.