American Elsewhere

by Robert Jackson Bennett

It only looks like a skull. Bolan knows it is really much more than that.

  He closes the box, rehooks the clasp, and places the box in the safe and shuts it. Then he sighs a little. It is getting so goddamn hard not to bite the hand that feeds him these days.

  When he stands back up he sees Mallory is looking into the mirror behind the liquor cabinet shelves. She appears a little rattled, which is odd: Bolan has seen Mallory take care of stabbings and ODs without even blinking an eye, so the idea that anything could upset her is new to him.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  “Hm? Oh. Nothing. I was just thinking about something she said.”

  “The junkie?”

  “Yeah. She wanted to come with me. Back to here, if you can believe it. But not for a hit or anything like that. She doesn’t like being alone at night anymore. She says her dreams have changed.”

  “How so?”

  “She says she dreams about the same thing every night now,” Mallory says faintly, still staring at herself in the mirror. “She dreams about a man, standing in her bedroom. He’s very tall, dressed in a dirty blue canvas suit. And he’s got little wooden rabbit heads sewn all along his suit. And his head… she said she doesn’t know if it’s a helmet, or a mask, like an Indian mask or something, but it’s all wooden too, all painted up like a rabbit head, with two pointy ears. He just stands there, and though she can’t see his eyes she’s sure he’s watching her. Can you believe that, Tom?”

  Bolan is silent. Again he remembers what Zimmerman told him: there was a light in the trees, and then a man was there, watching them. And they could see nothing about him except two points on his head, like horns or maybe ears…

  He watches Mallory carefully. He told the boys a little bit about what they were doing on the mesa—not much, but enough—but Mallory is now coming very close to a truth Bolan would prefer to keep hidden.

  “Come here,” he says to her, and gestures. She walks over to the desk.

  “Sit,” he says, and she does so, curious.

  “Let me tell you what we’re going to do here, Mallory,” he says. “This is some delicate work. And you’ve handled it delicately. But we’re going to need to be even more delicate from here on out.”

  “What does delicate mean?”

  Bolan opens a drawer on his desk, reaches in, and produces a small plastic baggie containing a white powder. He places it on the edge of the desk before her.

  “You offering me a bump?” Mallory asks, entertained.

  Bolan smiles humorlessly and shakes his head. “No. No, I am not. That shit is not pure, Mal. It is quite the opposite of pure. If you were to partake of that, why, you’d be pale and stiff within an hour. Do you see?”

  Mallory glances at the baggie again. “No.”

  “Well, let me explain. Sometime soon—not now, but soon—you’re going to go back to that girl of yours…”

  “Bonnie.”

  “Right. Bonnie. You’re going to go back to her and make her run that route in the tunnels again.”

  “She’s not going to want to do that, Tom,” says Mallory. “She’s shook up as it is.”

  “Well, that’s tough, because you’re going to make her. She’s not going to have a choice. Not the way her good friend Mallory sells it.”

  Mallory is quiet for a bit. “And how is she going to sell it?”

  He smiles again. “Mallory’s going to say that she’s carrying some seriously quality shit, and she’d be all too happy to pass it along if Bonnie does this one little favor again for her,” says Bolan. “For us.”

  For a while there is silence, broken only by the whoops from downstairs.

  Mallory looks back at the little white baggie. “And where does that enter into it?” she asks.

  Bolan stares at her balefully with his hooded, puffy eyes. “Are you fucking stupid, Mal?” he asks. “Don’t tell me you’re fucking stupid. Because I know you, and I know you’re not fucking stupid. You’re a very smart girl. That’s why I keep you around, right?”

  “I’m not… I can’t do something like that.”

  “But you can, and you will. You’re going to do it, Mal. It’s going to happen. That girl has too many stories rolling around in her head. She did some real choice work for us, sure, but things are getting too hot to just leave her walking around.” He nods at the baggie. “This is the easy way. We don’t want to do it the hard way. I know the hard way, Mal, and it’s hard on everyone.”

  Mallory looks from the baggie to Bolan, and her eyes gain a steely glint. “Who’s saying to do this? Is it you? Or is it them?”

  Bolan stares back impassively. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Because it’s going to happen, one way or another, so who gives the order is irrelevant.”

  Mallory loses a little color, but the steely glint grows. Bolan is amused and surprised by this reaction: Mal’s never personally killed anyone, sure, but he knows she’s seen people die. What does it matter, he thinks, whose hand does the actual act?

  “Who’s it for?” she asks.

  “Who’s what for?”

  “The skulls. I know who the last one was for. They just buried him today, for God’s sakes. So who is this one meant for?” Her eyes thin. “And, if you’re making me run her again, the next?”

  Bolan, who has been perfectly still throughout this, grows even stiller. Then he stands up, walks around his desk, and sits down in the chair beside her. He watches her with his hooded eyes, disappointed. Because they are not discussing a murder: this is business, and Mal is inconveniencing him.

  He takes a breath, the air whistling through his nostrils, and lets it out. Then he snatches out with his thick boxer’s hands and grabs Mallory’s head by the temples. Mallory cries out and tries to push back, but Bolan is extremely strong, and this is a dance he knows too well.

  He pulls her close, close enough that his breath washes over her face. “Are you going to fucking do it?” he asks. “Huh? You had better, girl, you had fucking better. Because though I need you, and I do need you, you got an easy job here. I ain’t asking you to put a bullet in her or cut her any, but I could and I’d expect you to do it. I’m just asking you to give her a dose. And you’re going to give her a dose, Mal. Because like I said, the hard way is hard on everyone, but it’ll be especially hard on you.”

  Mallory groans and screams and struggles against him, but Bolan knows no one can hear over the noise from downstairs. “What do you say?” he breathes. “What do you say, Mal? What do you fucking say?”

  Then he stops. She stops moving as well.

  A small white light has just lit up on his desk. Both of them freeze and look. Then they look back at one another, wondering what to do next.

  Bolan’s mouth twists. He shoves her away and stands up. “Stay right there,” he says.

  Mallory laughs and looks up at him, grinning. “They whistle and you come running, is that it?”

  Bolan makes a move to hit her, and she flinches and raises an arm. But he lowers his hand and adjusts his collar. “Stay right fucking there,” he says again, and he goes to his closet door and opens it.

  Behind it is a low, dark hallway with foam-soundproofed walls. There is only one light, a bare bulb hanging by a wire from the ceiling at the very end. This bulb is always on. Bolan has to change it every two weeks.

  Below the light is a very curious contraption. It stands on a small iron pedestal, and is protected by a tall glass dome. It has a wide, round, heavy base, and a bronze frame, and many small gears and wheels laid against one another. The biggest wheel holds a large roll of white tape, and the machine is clacking and clicking away merrily, writing something out on the tape. Once, decades ago, the machine was used to print out the prices of stocks, recording the falling and rising of fortunes and making a small pile of financial data on the ground. But Bolan knows that what it is printing now is definitely not stock prices.

  He shuts the door carefully beh
ind him and locks it. This side of the door has been soundproofed as well. He cannot afford to have anyone listening to the conversations he has in here.

  He takes a breath and walks to the stock ticker. It has just printed out a very small message, composed in neat, staggered writing. He picks it up (trying hard not to notice his trembling hands) and reads:

  WHO WAS THE GIRL

  “What?” Bolan asks. He does not direct this to the stock ticker, but to the air just above it. “What girl? Which girl do you mean?” He wonders if they mean Bonnie, or Mallory, or maybe even some other girl they used for… whatever. Bolan has so many plates spinning on so many poles, sometimes it’s hard for him to keep them straight.

  And then, despite all the soundproofing, and no one being nearby that Bolan can see, a response ticks out. As it always does.

  THE GIRL AT THE FUNERAL IN THE RED CAR

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Bolan. “I had a man at the funeral. He didn’t see…” He pauses. Then he sighs, shuts his eyes, and pinches the bridge of his nose. Fucking Dord! he thinks, but he dares not say this out loud. Fucking dumbshit fucking Dord! Didn’t see or hear anything, did you?

  Bolan swallows. “You may be right,” he says. “I apologize for missing this. What would you like me to do?”

  The stock ticker comes to life again. It prints out:

  FIND OUT WHO SHE IS

  “I will,” says Bolan. “I promise I will. I’ll find out right away and let you know. Is that all you want me to do?”

  The stock ticker does not answer. It is not dead, he knows, but dormant. Sometime, maybe soon, it will come to life again.

  He tears off the tape, takes out a lighter, and sets it alight. Then he drops it on the floor and watches it wither into ash before stamping it out. The floor is black and ashen there. It has been for years. How many secret orders has he taken here? he thinks. How many cryptic little messages has he burned at this spot? Sometimes they are so simple: pick up a box there, mail it here; have someone put a line of paint on this window; threaten this man, and mention this woman; or, perhaps, go trawling through the sewers of Wink looking for a dark, tiny passageway that ends in a round chamber, and in this chamber will be a pile of many, many little skulls, and you must bring one skull to this person at this place, but you must be so, so careful not to touch it…

  And now this. There is someone new in Wink, something that has not happened in years, and Bolan missed it.

  He charges back down out of the hall and storms into his office. Mallory is at the liquor cabinet again, hair fixed and dress arranged as if nothing has happened: she is a creature used to abuse, both the giving and receiving of it.

  “Bad news?” she asks.

  “Go and get Dord,” Bolan snarls.

  “Why?”

  Bolan marches over to her, takes the glass out of her hand, and flings it against the wall. It shatters, leaving a dark stain spreading on the crimson wallpaper. “Go and get fucking Dord,” he says. “Or so help me God you will be drinking out of a fucking straw, you hear me?”

  “Fine,” Mallory says mildly, and—with an intentionally slow, graceful pace—walks out the door and down the stairs.

  Bolan stands in his office for a moment, fists clenched. Then he looks back down the hall at the stock ticker. He half expects it to move, printing out some other harrowing little request. But it does not, and thankfully remains silent. He shuts the closet door, locks it, and leans up against it as if there were something behind it fighting to get out. Then he lets out a breath.

  The stock ticker was installed in his office not long after he made his agreement with the visitor from Wink. There was no explanation offered: the installation crew, all blank-faced little men in gray jumpsuits, just handed him an envelope with his name on it before walking into the Roadhouse and going to work. Inside was a card that read:

  PAY ATTENTION.

  And for the past three years it has ticked out orders for him now and again, and each time he obeyed his fortunes improved. Only once did he dare get curious: he examined the cord running to the ticker and followed it throughout the Roadhouse, through the walls and across the ceilings and down the stairs (and how did the installation men do that in an hour? Had they been, he wondered, secretly entering the Roadhouse during closed hours and laying yet more line?) until it went outside, snaking into the lot behind in a small tin pipe… where it finally ended in the woods, the end of the pipe unsealed and open. When Bolan found this, he stared at it. The pipe went nowhere? How could that be? But his confusion increased when he knelt and peered into the pipe, and saw the end of the fraying wire exposed, unconnected to anything at all.

  The night after he followed the pipe into the woods, the stock ticker printed out a single command, and this time it was familiar:

  PAY ATTENTION.

  Now, whenever the ticker springs to life, Bolan’s heart almost stops. He does not know how it receives any signal, but, like so many things in his new endeavors, he does not really want to know.

  But sometimes they send someone along to make sure he gets the message. And tonight, as Bolan waits for Dord to come lumbering up the stairs to explain why he missed the arrival of this new girl in the red car, he wonders again if they will come.

  He walks to the window, but does not look out. He shuts his eyes, hoping to see nothing. Then he opens them.

  There, standing in the center of the blue spotlight of the farthest parking lot lamp, someone looks back at him. The figure is so far away that it is tiny… but Bolan is sure he can make out a blue-gray suit, and a white panama hat, and below that a face lost in shadow…

  The white hat inclines slightly, then rises up again: a nod. Then its owner steps back into the darkness, and is gone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mona’s night at the Ponderosa Acres did not go well. She found no restful sleep in a place where the air felt so stale and undisturbed, and though she knew there were no other boarders she never felt alone. And sometime around one thirty she awoke—or she thinks she awoke, because the whole thing might have been a dream—with the strong conviction that something was wrong, and she went to the window and saw someone standing in the parking lot perfectly still with his hands at his sides, his face and front darkened by the yellow streetlight behind him. Though Mona felt a great unease at the sight of this person, she was not sure if he saw her or not; he might not have been looking at the motel at all. He made her think of an escapee from a mental institution, wandering aimlessly and wondering what to do with all this freedom in a strange new world. She must not have been terribly disturbed by this, she thinks as she fumbles through her morning routine in the motel room, if she went back to bed after.

  Once she gets herself cleaned up she goes to see Parson. The morning sky is blindingly blue, and the air is crisp and cold. She finds it hard to reconcile this sky with the one last night, dark and wreathed with blue lightning and burdened with the pink moon.

  When she enters the front office she sees that the darkness from last night was concealing absolutely nothing: the office is completely empty save for the card table and the desk. It feels like an awful waste of space. Parson is sitting at the table playing Chinese checkers as if he’s never left the spot. He is too involved in his game to look at her when she enters: he purses his lips judiciously, scratches a temple, and begins to make a move before suddenly rethinking, his hand darting back as if the checkers were poison. He shakes his head, silently scolding himself for considering such a poor choice.

  “Do you often play checkers by yourself?” Mona asks.

  He looks up, surprised. “By myself?” he asks. Then he smiles and laughs, as if this is a grand joke. “Ah, I see. By myself… very good.”

  Mona chooses to change the subject. “Any idea how the probate courts work around here?”

  Parson sets his coffee aside to think. “I am not sure about probate courts. There is only one court, though, and only one court officer—Mrs. Benjamin.”r />
  “There’s only one officer? How does that work?”

  “Very well, apparently,” says Parson. “There is not exactly much to do in the courts here. I believe it is overstaffed with just one person, really.”

  “And where is this Mrs. Benjamin?”

  “In the courthouse. Her office occupies the majority of the basement. You need only find a set of stairs there—any stairs will do—and go down them. Inevitably, you will find her.”

  “Where’s the courthouse at?” Mona asks, slipping on her sunglasses.

  “It’s in the center of the park, which is in the center of the town. Go inward. If you find yourself on the border of town—and it would not take very long—then you have missed it.”

  “You can’t give me any street directions?”

  “I could,” says Parson, “but they would not be as good.”

  “Fine,” says Mona, and thanks him.

  “Are you hungry?” asks Parson earnestly, as if her allowing herself to be hungry would be an abominable crime. “I can spare you another complimentary breakfast, if so, even though you have already eaten yours.”

  As Mona has kicked the habit of morning beers, she politely declines. “When’s checkout time?”

  Parson appears to debate getting up and going to his desk and rifling through his cards and papers again, but instead he just shrugs. “Whenever you check out, I suppose.”

  “Is it okay if I leave my stuff here until I figure out how long I’ll be staying? I don’t expect that they’ll let me have the house too easy.”

  But Parson has glanced at his board of checkers again and spied some brilliant move hidden among the pattern of marbles. With an impatient wave he returns to the game and the unoccupied seat across from him, and does not notice when Mona leaves.

  As Mona drives across Wink all the sprinklers start to come on, not instantly, but in a slow, graceful procession, like water jets in a huge fountain, starting at the corner of one block and moving down to the next. In the morning light the streams of water take on a white glow, and when they begin waving back and forth, each one a little more delayed than the last, Mona feels like she’s watching a synchronized-swimming performance. It isn’t until she’s near the end of the block that she realizes the idea of watering a lawn here is strange: they’re in the high desert mountains, with barren scrub less than half a mile away. It feels impossible that she should find so many soft, verdant lawns lining the streets, and Mona glances up at the mountains and the mesa to confirm they’re still there.