by Jack Kerley
“Don’t laugh at me,” he rasped. “I’ll goddamn kill you.”
His trip was turning ugly. I said, “I’d never laugh at a man who knows what he’s about. If you took me wrong, I apologize.”
He blinked at me so hard I could tell I was little more than a hazy shape in his addled mind. His grip fell loose and he patted my arm.
“You’re OK, dude. I thought you were laughing.”
“No man, I was listening. You heard from a guy who heard it from Meltzer.”
He stumbled backwards a step, rediscovered his chain of thought. “The guy was s’posed to keep it secret but got drunk and told me ’bout this crazy doctor who’s doing a Frankenstein act with…I dunno, that cell shit.”
Frankenstein. Flying people. Crazy doctors. I backpedaled slowly away, making a note to be careful about laughing.
“Gotta head back to the rally, brother,” I said. “Nice meeting you.”
“We all gotta hold together, man,” he called after me. “Some mad scientist grew a special baby. They’re gonna make clones outta it. We gotta fight for our own.”
The word baby had been much in my life of late. I turned back to the guy.
“You know anything more about that baby the guy was talking abo—”
“Spider, you there?” A voice from the far side of the trees cut me off. Feet were pounding through the underbrush, approaching fast.
“You out here, man? Yo, Spider?”
Spider’s mouth dropped in fear. I spun and disappeared into the woods, stopping and crouching behind a clump of briar. I heard a commotion and looked back. Moonlight revealed four guys circling the druggie.
Someone said, “You gotta learn to keep your mouth shut, Spider –” and I heard a fist smack into flesh.
I ducked away, re-emerging two hundred feet distant in the light of the meadow. The bonfire was raging. The fire crew had stripped off their shirts. Sweat glistened on their torsos as they humped logs into flames licking twenty feet into the night sky.
I passed by a lone biker chick leaning against a tree, pushing back loops of fake-blonde hair, sucking a beer. Her eyes sparkled with amphetamine.
“Hey there, handsome,” she purred. “How ’bout we go back in the bushes and crank off a quick fuck?”
“No thanks,” I said over my shoulder.
“Don’t like to fuck girls?” came the taunt.
“Don’t like to fuck quick,” I said, putting more jump in my steps.
I heard a roar at my back and turned to see a dozen bikers thundering into the parking meadow, cranking accelerators on straight-piped Harleys to announce their arrival. A roar arose from the crowd, three hundred voices howling at once. Bodies parted for the biker escort, a large white step van following the Harleys. The growling phalanx entered the field and I saw fists raised in salutes of joy.
“He’s here,” said the hulking man behind me, so softly it sounded like prayer. Someone else said, “Praise God.”
Arnold Meltzer had arrived.
I watched the step van pull in front of the stage. A ladder allowed access to its roof and two rangy guys scampered up like monkeys, unrolling a carpet across the top and setting up a microphone and PA horns the diameter of truck tires. The crowd tightened around the vehicle and I was pressed toward the front.
“Arn-old, Arn-old…” rose in a chant from the crowd, all eyes aimed toward the van. It was a scene of tumult and exultation. A woman beside me was crying with joy.
“Arnold, Arnold…”
A cheer filled the air as a man slipped from the rear of the van followed by four others. The quartet climbed the ladder with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders, took wide-stance positions atop the van, eyes staring into the crowd. Dressed in black pants and blue shirts, they had wide black belts of shiny leather holding holstered sidearms.
I blinked, looked again at a man atop the van, close to the edge. It was the deputy from the scene at the burned house, Briscoe’s man. What was his name?
Briscoe’s voice yelled in my memory: “Baker! Git to the car and you git calm.”
I filed the name away as Meltzer ascended the ladder, the crowd deafening in its adulation. He was a small man with an imperious, military bearing, hair short and neat and black. He moved as though lighter than air, a pixie. His perfectly tailored white suit seemed an improbable choice until I noted how much it stamped him as different from the rabble below; it was, in effect, a uniform.
I was close enough to see his mouth, and its full and pursed femininity surprised me, as if someone had pasted the lips of Marilyn Monroe on Adolf Hitler. The mouth twitched and blossomed as the crowd roared, palms slamming together, fists waving, boot heels pounding the hard dirt.
Meltzer patted his hand downward in the silence motion and the crowd obeyed as readily as sheep; in seconds all I heard was breathing. He looked out over the throng and moved to the mic with catlike grace.
“Ih-ehs-isn’t it a buh-beautiful night t-tuh-to b-be white, my Aryan buh-buh-brothers and ssss-si-issssss-sisters?”
Arnold Meltzer stuttered. Not gently, but racked by the struggle to push words out, hunching his shoulders, clenching his fists, fighting for syllable by tortured syllable. Had I seen the contortions from behind, I would have thought his body gripped by epileptic seizure.
When Meltzer finished his sentence, the crowd exploded, first into joyful screams and rebel yells, then into a rising chant: Arn-old, Arn-old, Arn-old…
It occurred to me that Meltzer’s acceptance of his impediment played perfectly in a crowd where all were afflicted, mentally, emotionally, economically, educationally. He may have been smarter, wealthier, and better educated, but he too was deeply wounded.
Arn-old, Arn-old…
He allowed a full minute of adoration, drawing energy from the vocal thunder, then waved the chanting down, the pursed lips satisfied, the mouth of a man receiving dues a long time coming. Beside Meltzer, Baker’s puffed chest and wide stance might have been funny if he hadn’t been holding a weapon that could cut down an oak.
The guy beside me said, “Fuckin’ incredible, hunh? Arnold is God.”
“Who’s the guy beside him? The crew-cut guy to the right?”
“That’s Boots Baker, brother. Boots is a monster, Meltzer’s shadow. You walk up to Meltzer without being asked, Boots takes your head off.”
The guy grinned at the idea of heads coming off and turned to face front as Meltzer launched into his own particular form of sermon, his voice brittle through the metal cones of the public address system.
“A fuh-false prophet is more d-d-deadly than a wu-weapon, for a weapon can only ki-ki-ki-kill bodies, but false prophet can d-destroy souls. The f-false prophet can destroy ten thousand sssssouls with a ssssingle utterance. Wuh-we have s-seen a fu-fuh false prophet and learned of his tuh-terrible d-d-debasement…”
The crowd booed as Meltzer hissed and twitched out an obvious reference to Scaler, heaping manure on the man’s legacy, alternately painting him as mad, debased, delusional, traitorous. Meltzer shoveled for a few minutes, then segued to an allied theme.
“Those who wuh-would r-r-rule us like sheep have nuh-new weapons and n-new lies…” he said, feet away from Briscoe’s deputy. There was a sneer on Baker’s face, as if standing atop that truck next to a lump of human garbage marked the pinnacle of his existence.
“We mu-muh-may hear terrible l-l-lies over the n-next weeks and muh-muh-months. Lies designed to-t-t-tear the wuh-white race apart. Lies designed to du-du-destroy our way of life. Sssstay strong and du-don’t ever waver. It will all b-be lies. Lies. Lies! LIES! LIES!”
The crowd picked up the rhythm and chanted the word lies until the ground shook. Meltzer seemed to be preparing the crowd for some upcoming news or announcement detrimental to the movement.
The speech ended with thunderous applause as Meltzer performed a series of salutes including white power and the standard Nazi crowdpleaser. I wondered if successful white supremacists had to memorize salu
tes like NFL players memorized play-books.
I was ready to leave. My head hurt from the noise and assaults on reason and I had much to think about, including Deputy Baker being one of Meltzer’s honor guard. How the rant against the dead Scaler fit into anything. And Spider’s mention of a strange baby, a stream of babble reminding me of the mad screeching of Terry Lee Bailes.
The parking area was on the other side of the milling, agitated crowd, and I waded into the hoots and rebel yells and displays of the various salutes. The band had returned and was playing a heavymetal version of Dixie, the singer howling out revised lyrics.
I wish I was in the land of cotton,
the niggers and spics dead and forgotten,
It’s God’s way, it’s God’s way, it’s God’s way,
Dixie land
I crossed fifty feet past the barbecue tent, looked up to see Meltzer’s security detail fueling on pork. Baker was to the side, a solemn, powerfully muscled apparition in the rippling orange light of the nearby bonfire. He was scanning the crowd and looked into my eyes.
I saw reptilian curiosity, brow furrowing as neurons of recognition fired in his brain. I pulled my hat low and tight and ducked into a dozen men standing in a circle and comparing sidearms.
I heard Baker’s voice. “Hey you – stop!”
Baker was frantically waving several men to him, pointing in my direction. I sunk deeper in the crowd, staying low. I saw a group of heavies walking fast at the edge of the rally, looking in. I ducked and circled. When I looked again, I couldn’t see what direction they’d headed. Should I cut to the left or right to make my break? My palms turned wet.
I ducked lower, headed for the edge of the crowd. I decided to cut left, to the east.
A nearby voice hissed, “No. Right! Go to the right!”
I spun to the voice, saw only a wide back stumbling away under a dirty gray cowboy hat, beer bottle in hand, another drunk. But I took a chance on the strange twist of fate, dodging to the right. After a long two minutes, I emerged by the wood fence separating the rally grounds from the parking area.
I slipped between vehicles, saw an orange Toyota Four-Runner ahead and to the side. It boasted all the trimmings, roof lights, chrome luggage rack, mud guards. I wouldn’t have seen the vehicle except that it was lit by twin halogen lamps. A white towel was closed in the rear gate of the vehicle, a red cross hand-painted in its center.
It was a small aid station, which made an ironic sense, given the stoners and drunks wandering through a farm field at night. It was a place to fix barb-wire gouges, burns from stumbling in the fire, noses busted in friendly fights, methedrine ODs, and so forth.
I heard a voice moan, “Owwww. That fuckin’ hurts,” and recognized the voice of Spider. I saw him in a chair beside the aid station, the medic’s back to me, pulling a suture tight.
“It hurts, gawdammit,” Spider moaned. “I hurt ever’where.”
I heard voices back in the field, the unwelcoming committee trying to figure which way I’d run. I yearned to hear more of Spider’s cryptic ramblings about Frankenstein babies, but crouched and zigzagged to my truck, blowing away with lights off before my pursuers arrived with a noose.
Chapter 38
I made it home at two a.m. I saw the call light flicking on my phone, pulled out my cell, shut off before the rally. Calls were stacked up on the cell as well, all from Harry. I felt a sense of dread.
“What is it, bro?” I said when he picked up.
“Noelle’s gone. This time the grab was successful.”
My breath froze in my throat. “What? How?”
“The security detail and staff were distracted by a car burning on the street below…”
“A what?”
“The fire trucks added to the drama, kept the faces glued to the window. The flames were twenty feet high.”
I saw the picture. “Staged,” I said.
“Stolen car. A backseat full of rags. A soaking of gasoline and fuel oil. The staff were distracted for maybe five minutes.”
I heard voices in the background, a clattering like a cart or gurney.
“You’re at the hospital?” I asked.
“The thing happened at eleven. I’ve been interviewing, checking security tapes – nothing.”
“What can I do, bro?”
“Go to bed. Get some sleep. There’s nothing left here.”
“I’ll see you in a few hours and –”
“Carson?” he interrupted, his voice ragged.
“Yes?”
“You were at the rally, right?”
When I didn’t answer, he clicked off. I took his advice and fell into bed. Sleep was a series of disjointed images: a mouth talking with only the sound of thunder emerging, arachnids crawling over webs spun from faces, subhuman creatures feeding a fire so hot it burned blue.
After crawling from bed at five a.m., I climbed into my truck in the dark and drove toward Mobile, at the last moment turning east on I-10 and crossing away from Mobile, driving east into Daphne.
The sky carried only a whisper of light when I parked in Kavanaugh’s drive. The house was dark inside. I approached the door of her office and sat on the stoop. There was no sound from the house, the drapes drawn and the curtains closed.
The sun began giving form to the shapes in the night and I felt vulnerable. I retreated to the causeway, the slender spit of sand linking the east and west shores of Mobile Bay, pulling off near the eastern shore, by Meaher Park.
I sat on the hood of my truck and looked across the water. Fishermen in small boats were gathering their nets. I pictured escaping fish beneath the surface, jumbled and in turmoil, much like the thoughts in my brain had become of late. Last week, the jumble and turmoil had started not just crawling into the light but ramping up into actions. I had done stupid things that seemed to explode from the shadows of my mind.
Was I going mad? Had the family curse slithered from a hiding place in my genes?
I tucked the disquieting thoughts away for later study, then went to do my job as best as I knew.
I found Harry at the hospital, trying to make sense of the crime. He sat in an exam room with a full-size poster of a skinless human body on the wall and laid out the details of the abduction.
“The fire distracted the staff. Someone moved in, took Noelle, and made it outside – or hid until they could get outside. The doc called me at eleven thirty. By the time I got here it was a mess, everyone running into themselves.” Harry looked on the brink of exhaustion, his clothes rumpled, his breath sour.
“Nothing on the cams?”
“A few people that look like staffers. We’re checking them out one by one. We’re checking everyone out one by one. But no one saw anything out of the ordinary.” He looked at me. “I really need you, Carson. I’m not sure if I’m thinking straight.”
I started to argue. “You always get one hundred –”
He stopped me with an upraised palm. “I’m trying to stay here as long as possible, get the investigation on fast-forward. As soon as Tom finds out I’m here, he’ll pull me. Tell him I’m working the Scaler case; buy me some time.”
“Sure.”
I started away. Harry called out.
“Carson?”
I turned to face him.
He said, “I need your head on straight, and I need it now. Don’t let me down, brother.”
I nodded and looked at my feet. I said, “I’m sorry.” It seemed a strange thing to say.
I headed downtown to the department to continue researching Scaler and Tutweiler. On the way I pulled into a convenience store to grab something to eat. I picked at the stacks for five minutes, nothing looking good, finally snatching a couple of chili dogs and a can of Dr Pepper.
A dozen customers queued ahead of me, highway-construction guys in work boots and luminous green shirts. A couple of female office workers in skirts and heels and fresh perfume. I saw a biker-gang type in ratty clothes with a bright chain slung belt to wallet. He
was leaning against the wall by the door to the restrooms, talking on his cellphone. He shot me a look, went back to his conversation.
I stood in line and counted my change. I felt eyes on me, looked at the guy. His eyes shot away. Waited. Lifted. Saw me watching him.
He said, “Gotta go, Miriam. Catch you later.” He walked back toward the restrooms.
Miriam? I thought. The guy who’d smacked me with the hospital cart had been talking to Miriam when I interrupted him in the restroom.
Gotta go, Miriam. We’ll talk later.
Was the improbable name a code for, I can’t talk now, someone’s listening? I walked back to the can but saw no one inside. I pushed open the door of the women’s john.
I saw no one until the guy exploded from the stall, shouldering me into the wall as he blasted out the door. I scrambled after him. Bolting toward the front of the store I heard the roar of a Harley cranking up. As I pushed through into the lot, the guy was roaring away, shooting glances over his shoulder.
He’d been following me.
I threw a fiver at the surprised clerk and high-balled to the hospital where I told Harry about the incident. Five minutes later we were with the hospital’s director of human resources, Daria Fareth, an attractive light-skinned black woman with dazzling green eyes.
“We need to talk to a male employee,” I said. “Mid thirties. Five-eleven to six feet tall, stocky, weighs maybe two twenty. Brown hair, thinning at the top. Pushes a cart poorly.”
Wentworth flipped through personnel files with attached ID photos. “Him?” she said, turning the book our way, slender finger tapping a head shot.
“Nope,” I said. “Our guy’s younger and uglier.”
“This fellow?” She turned another photo our way, her nose twitching like a septic odor was rising from the page.
“Bingo,” I said. “Cart-man. What can you tell us about this guy without getting in confidentiality trouble?”
“Michael Douthitt – a less-than-model employee. Lazy, not real bright, smokes inside the hospital, and has a way of…” Wentworth looked at Harry. “A way of talking down to people who aren’t white. But makes it so it doesn’t sound like down, y’know?”