Braineater Jones

by Stephen Kozeniewski

  “You really are just a useful idiot, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Watch it, bub,” I said.

  “No, I think it is you who are the bub,” vulture-man said. “We are not stupid here. We know your type.”

  “I think it’s usually translated ‘kind,’ Popov,” I said.

  “And what did Mr. Forday send you for?” he asked.

  Was that another pseudonym? Who knew he had so many in him.

  “Hauling cargo, I guess,” I said.

  “Well, this”—he tapped the funny symbol—“is a swastika. You will know it very well, soon, I think.”

  “NSDAP,” I said, feeling the words coming to my lips as I spoke them. “Nazi Party.”

  The vulture smiled. “You’ve heard of us. Good. Now you can get started over there.” He pointed to one corner of the loft particularly well infested with the poorly tailored European types. I didn’t much want to go over there. I would’ve avoided it if I could. Maybe he already had me pegged as a snoop. Maybe not.

  I did notice something on the wall. “Now that symbol, I’m a little more familiar with.” There was a neon pink snake eating its own tail. Same graffito vandal as did the fancy eye-tie welcome sign to the Mat. Same fellow who marked up the whole neighborhood where Ed and Joey lived. “I suppose that means you’re working with the Infected.”

  “It makes no difference,” the vulture said. “We work with whoever is useful. And you, right now, are useful for lifting boxes. Right over there.”

  He pointed again. I swallowed—an utterly meaningless gesture for a deadhead—and took a step.

  I don’t think I got more than two paces before he cold-cocked me in the back of the head with a cosh. In retrospect, I was probably lucky to still be unalive. I never really found out how much damage our kind could take before being killed, but it seemed like a simple whack was enough to put me out without putting me down.

  When I woke up, guess who was staring at me?

  “Hey, sweetlips,” she said.

  “Hey, yourself,” I said. “So, how’s the treason business going?” I struggled to move, but she had razor-wired me to the ground but good. I looked around a bit. We were still in the loft, only in the upper part. Downstairs, the mungos were still moving cargo.

  “Oh, Jones,” she said, “you always know just what to say to get my blood boiling.”

  I tugged on the wires. Nothing doing. They were looped through big metal hooks in the ground. Cargo hooks, I suppose. I did have the option of slicing my body to pieces. Hey, they had sewn her brother back together. Then again, I didn’t know too many friendly seamstresses.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Oh, you know me,” I said. “Just trying to get the answers to a few questions.”

  “Like who took your money clip?”

  Huh?

  “Huh?”

  She pulled the old silver beastie out of her pocket. She waved it in front of my eyes. I guess she intended it to be tantalizing. Then she laid it down on my chest. “Come on, now, Jones. That’s a lot of trouble to go to over something so silly. I left you the money.”

  I struggled against the wires. What can I say? I’m nothing if not a creature of habit. One tends to want to be free. Damn it. What was she talking about? “What? You’re talking about my billfold? That’s easily the least of my problems right now.”

  She leaned back and laughed, long and sophisticated-like. Her neck went all the way back, like one of those Egyptian queens. Creepy. “You didn’t even think to ask, did you? Where did it go? You’re one hell of a detective.”

  “Hey, now,” I said, “there’s no cause for a lady to swear.”

  She was on her knees and over my head in an instant. In any other situation, I would’ve been thrilled. She grabbed my chin and my neck, though, as if she wanted to tear it off. Just tear the skin off my face.

  Something was up. Something was in her. Maybe it was her time of the month. If our kind gets such a thing.

  “I’m not a lady”—she slammed my head against the caged metal floor—“any more than you’re a man. And I’ll swear as much as I damn well please.”

  She punctuated her sentences with creaming my head against the floor. I wasn’t much enjoying it. Not sure how long I could’ve survived it, either. Probably a while, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “Listen,” I muttered, “I don’t know how deep you are in this. I don’t care, either. But you know the answers I want. So help me out. Or kill me now.”

  She stared at me for a while, then picked the silver clip up off my chest. “You’re a queer cat.”

  “You love me,” I said.

  “Don’t”—it was one of those long, dangerous pauses—“make that mistake.” The old dame stood up and walked back and forth, her heels clicking across the floor. They weren’t quite stilettos. Those would’ve punched right through the caged steel and ripped her ankles to pieces. They were still fairly high heels though and made loud clanks. She wheeled back on me. “I’ll tell you what. How about I answer one question for you—only one—for old time’s sake. You seem to have a lot on your mind.”

  “Any question?” I asked.

  “Any question,” she said.

  “And you have to answer it completely?” I said.

  “To the best of my knowledge,” she said. “And no games, Jones. This is a courtesy, if you will. No ‘what’s going on here’ or ‘tell me what you know.’”

  Damn. If a half-remembered lifetime of genie stories had taught me one thing, it was that semantic arguments always outwitted a godlike being somehow.

  There was so much to know. What were the Nazis doing here? Was she in charge? Why had she taken the billfold? When had she taken it? No, in retrospect, I guess I knew the answer to that one. What was in the suitcase I had delivered to that very loft a week ago? Why had she hired Ed and Joey? Why were the Nazis in bed with the Infected, of all people? A European gang with an all-American street gang? Didn’t make much sense except viewed through a different lens.

  And those were just the questions on the tip of my tongue. There was a whole list of unanswered, numbered questions, too. Unfortunately, that list was in my jacket pocket, and I was strapped to the ground like a bull about to get castrated. Maybe in more ways than one.

  “Tick tock, Jonesy,” she said. “Time’s up.”

  “All right,” I said, and I picked one. “What did Lazar make me deliver to this joint?”

  She smiled. I didn’t make her uncomfortable at all. Wrong question, I guess. “That is an interesting one. I guess I may as well tell you, Jones.”

  She disappeared for a few moments. I struggled to see where she went, but all I could get a glimpse of was her gams, working at something offscreen. Still, that was a nice view to get.

  When she came back, she threw a thin packet of white powder on my chest. Thin enough to have been in the suitcase. “This.”

  I glanced up at her. “That’s only a partial answer, genie.”

  She laughed. “You really don’t give up, do you? Well, this has nothing to do with anything we’re doing down there, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. Nothing you say or do matters. It’s enough to make a man feel pathetic. And bad in bed. But you already knew that.”

  If she wanted to get my goat, she probably had it, but I’d never show it.

  “Your best buddy’s been poisoning you,” she said.

  “Too late,” I said. “I’m already dead.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, “I forgot. But what can every other deadhead do that you can’t? Still. After… how long’s it been? A month?”

  “Three weeks,” I said.

  “Think about it,” she said.

  “I can’t remember my old life,” I said.

  “Ding ding ding. You win the carton of Camels, the brand more doctors prefer.”

  I wriggled, I guess a bit like a worm, trying to get a better look at the white powder. “This stuff keeps me dead in the he
ad?”

  “Long after you should’ve been remembering chasing fireflies and your first kiss with Norma Rottencrotch,” she said. “Do you get all your booze from the same place?”

  The gorilla behind the counter. Slipped a few greenbacks every week to fizz up my drinks and my drinks alone. The rest came in bottles straight from Lazar. I never bothered to check if they were open already or not.

  8. For that matter, why can’t I remember anything from before I died? Is that artificial, or is it part of the resurrection process? Because the old bastard Lazar is slipping me mickeys. I’ll fix his wagon. Somehow.

  “I wouldn’t bother coming here again,” she said. “You’re not the only one getting wise to us.”

  “What does that mean?” I said.

  “Ah ta ta,” she said. “I told you only one question.” She kissed my forehead. “Love you. Miss you.” She slammed me with the cosh again.

  Awake. Warehouse empty. The wires were gone, thank God. I rolled over. The pink snake eating itself was sprayed over with black. Nothing in particular. Just a big meaningless inkblot.

  I searched the place head to toe. Every inch of that damned mess. Not a cobweb, not a fingerprint. No secret “What Our Plan Is” manual, in German or otherwise. It was as though they had taken a blowtorch to the place.

  I walked back to the Mat, hands in my pockets, running it all over in my mind. The twist had let me live. If the Nazis wanted me as a fall guy, why had they sterilized the warehouse? I couldn’t believe Kumaree had let me live out of sentiment. Maybe she still wanted me pounding the pavement. A pawn that she didn’t necessarily want knocked off the board just yet.

  Or maybe… more likely… someone else was calling the shots. It was nice to feel wanted, even if it was just as a fall guy. But somehow it seemed like more was expected of me. Somebody up there wanted me to crack the case… or to kill somebody… or just to be a stumbling block. There was no way to know.

  I reached Hallowed Grounds and ran my fingers through the cat’s hair in the fence. I walked upstairs and dropped into my chair.

  “How’d it go?” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m not going to drink the water anymore,” I said. I grabbed the already open bottle of Crow. Miserably, I turned it upside down. I think if the head had legs, he would have come running at me.

  “Hey hey hey!” he yelled. “The hell are you doing?”

  “It’s poison,” I said. “Our rich Altstadter friend has been keeping me all doped up this whole time. That’s why I can’t remember. Time to get a new source of firewater.”

  “I could’ve drunk that,” he said. “I don’t have any trouble remembering.”

  “Yeah, well, it was symbolic,” I said. Symbolic, and it left a big puddle of bourbon on the rug. “We’ll start drinking clean stuff together. How’d it go for you?”

  “Didn’t have to shoot anyone,” he said. “Couple of times I thought I might have to, but mostly just kids screwing around.”

  “Damn kids,” I said and instinctively reached for my glass. Of course, no glass was there. Well, the glass was there, only it was empty.

  “What else did you find out?” he asked.

  I filled him in. The Nazis moving strange cargo. The cargo cult packing up in the middle of the night. Kumaree running it, or maybe being a middle-management type. It was all food for thought, but not much else. It didn’t bring us any closer to solving the case or even cracking a hole in it.

  November 21, 1934

  I was dry as a bone. Dying, really. What do our kind do when we sober up? I already knew that answer. We wander into the streets and chew off the top of Little Orphan Annie’s head.

  “I’m dying, Jones,” the head said.

  “Shut up,” I said. My throat was dusty. I felt a little tickle in my belly. Like a brain might really hit the spot.

  What was that all about? What was the fascination? Something primordial in our being that made us go for… No. Got to stop. I’m getting too sober. There must be a clean source of booze in the city.

  “What is this junk, anyway?” I said, throwing the packet of white powder down on the desk. She had left me that much at least. Along with a big sloppy red lipstick mark. On the bag, not on my face. Who could figure out dames?

  “Give me a drink,” he said, “so I can think straight.”

  I rolled over onto my belly. Everything seemed so hard. I crawled most of the way to the sink and poured a little sip of water into a Dixie cup. When I tipped it into the head’s mouth, he spat it out.

  “What is this piss?” he croaked.

  “It’s water,” I said.

  “I need alcohol!” he yelled.

  “This’ll have to do,” I said. “There’s nothing clean anywhere. Got to get out of the city. I don’t know.” I lurched to my feet. I felt like… I don’t know. Awful. Like my worst bender in real life. Not that I could remember that. Even bone-sober my memories weren’t coming back yet. I needed booze to function. Clean booze. I grabbed the head and stuffed him unceremoniously under my trench coat. No time for the parrot cage or anything else. I stumbled down into the fence.

  Homer and his cat looked up at me. “Jones? That you?”

  “Yeah,” I grunted.

  “You sound awful,” he said.

  “I’m blind stinking sober,” I said. “I need a drink.”

  “Why don’t you head on down?” he said, pointing toward the speakeasy.

  I shook my head, but of course he couldn’t see that. “No good. They’ve been spiking my drinks.”

  “Oh.” He made it sound as though he had heard that a hundred times before. Maybe he had. The community was small. I had to assume the fence heard most everything. He reached under his counter, searched around, and pulled out a bottle. Actually, it looked pretty old. Vintage-like. Not Crow, some junky brand, but it had to be clean. Unless Lazar was bribing the blind old fence too, which didn’t make a damn lick of sense. “Here.” He started pouring the booze all over the counter.

  I stopped him. “Thanks, Homer.”

  I put Alcibé on the counter. He had to be in a tray or turned upside down for the booze to take effect and not just leak out his neck. I flipped him, which elicited a moan.

  “Who’s that?” the blind man asked.

  “My partner. Bottoms up. Or whatever.”

  We took our drinks. I didn’t know about Alcibé, but that really took the edge off for me. Like a warm, burning glow that started in my belly and spread out to my fingertips and toes. Well, hell, it must’ve been different for the damn head. Probably just felt like some whiskey soaking into his skull.

  “Thanks, Homer,” I said.

  “Why don’t you boys take it?” he said, pushing the bottle toward me.

  I had to grab it to make sure it didn’t tip over. “No, I can’t.”

  “Doesn’t bother me. I can’t sell it. Not legally, anyway. I don’t drink the stuff.”

  “You sure?” I said.

  “Yeah, go ahead,” he said. “Consider it a gift. And, Jones?”

  “Yeah, Homer?”

  “I didn’t like you much when you first got here. But you’ve grown on me.”

  I could’ve said the same thing. I didn’t, though. Back upstairs, I sat the bottle on the desk. It was nearly full. Homer had clearly given a tipple now and then to special visitors on extra special occasions. But a bottle, well, how long did that last me? Even carefully rationed, it wouldn’t last us longer than a day or two. We’d still ultimately have to get out on the street and figure out some other source of booze.

  “I’ll worry about pounding the pavement for more tomorrow,” I said. “Right now, we need to wrap up this case.”

  “I don’t think we can do that with what we know right now, Jones.” He added, “Turn me over. I’m good.”

  I picked him up and put him back right side up. He was a pretty good judge of when it soaked all the way through
his brain. None of it spilled out of his neck.

  I rubbed my chin. “There’s too much going on. Too many pieces that don’t quite fit. What are the Nazis doing here? What are they moving?”

  “You said the warehouse was empty when you left?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They didn’t leave any clues?”

  “No, I searched the place. German efficiency. Clean as a Catholic school girl’s cooch.” I tapped my finger on my knee. Nervous tic.

  “Let me see that bag of powder,” he said.

  I tossed it to him. Of course, he didn’t catch it, so it landed on the ground with a thump. Sighing, I picked up the bag and the head and put them in good staring distance of each other.

  “Let me taste it,” he said.

  “I thought you didn’t—”

  “Shut up, Jones, and let me taste a bit.”

  I gave him the edge of my finger coated in a trickle of powder. His eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. “What?” I said. “What is it?”

  “I recognize this. I do. Delamort made this.”

  “What is it?”

  He shook his head. Or I guess, his whole self. It worked a bit better than his half-assed nods. “I don’t know. He called it jumbee powder. Not sure what it does.”

  “Numbs the brain,” I said.

  “He used it for experiments on us. Why, though, would Lazar have you deliver a suitcase full to the docks?”

  I shrugged. The only thing that made sense was if he wanted me to catch wind of it. I poured a shot of the fancy old whiskey the fence had given us. After a long staring at, I poured a shot for Alcibé, too.

  “I’d better hit the streets now after all,” I said. “My head is swirling, but one thing I know for sure is I won’t get anywhere if I don’t get us some good, clean swill.”

  “That’s a good idea,” he said.

  I got dressed. When I was about to step out the door, he stopped me.

  “Although,” he said, “you actually do have a good source of clean booze. You just have to skip over the bucket and go straight to the well.”

  “Lazar,” I said.

  He nodded, in his own funny fashion.

  November 22, 1934

  I waited outside Lazar’s penthouse. I decided to stake the place out. There was that smartass doorman, all full of himself like he was cock o’ the walk. Nerts to him. He didn’t do anything but open the door for rich people. I waited. It seemed like the right time when I saw a gorgeous dame with getaway sticks to die for walk in. I recognized her. She was one of ours. I had known her once. In the biblical sense. I walked up to the doorway.