Nightjack

by Tom Piccirilli

  “Not much of that around here,” Hayden told her. “Maybe they have smart chickens up at the Bronx Zoo. But in Brooklyn, the only real sightseeing you can do is maybe check out the original Nathan’s.”

  “Visit the Aquarium,” Faust read. “Deno’s Wonderwheel Park. Enjoy a hotdog with spicy mustard at Nathan’s Famous.”

  “When I was a kid,” Pia said, “my old man would put me on his lap and let me steer.” Her voice had taken on a placid, faraway quality. “It made my mother nervous, she always overreacted. I’d barely be touching the wheel and she’d gasp and hop in her seat like the car was skidding out of control. The bitch. The rotten bitch. My daddy would say, ‘That’s it, princess, you’re doing beautifully.’ I’d get a charge out of it, the idea that we were on these open roads, far from home, passing by men hauling potatoes or pumpkins in big pickup trucks. He’d say, ‘This nation is yours as much as anybody’s, never forget that. If you ever want to go anywhere, visit anyplace, then you just up and go. There’s no one who can stop you.’ My sister would get bored and cry. The bitch. The lousy cunt.”

  Faust, rubbing his scar, where they had taken things out or put more in, said, “My father always told me, ‘God watches your every movement. Even your dreams, son, your basest desires. Heaven watches and judges the imperfections of your very soul. It sees the cracks you put there. The sacred storm of providence is always near, ready to descend upon you, my child.’ Our father who art infuriating.”

  Hayden said, “My old man would just go, ‘Shut up and sit down, you little shithead! Stop eating paste! Go finish your baked beans!’ He was a mean prick.”

  As if squirming in her father’s lap, feeling him under her again, Pia started to bounce. “He’d wrap his arms around me and press his face to my back as I stared out the windshield and he’d press harder on the gas pedal and we’d race through the streets. Sometimes he’d cry. My blouse would get soaked. Sometimes he’d hum songs against my back. My mother would bite her hands.”

  “And we’re the ones they locked up,” Hayden said. “The fuck is wrong with people?”

  Dr. Brandt gave Pace a sidelong glance, trying to welcome him into the fellowship of judgment. He refused to meet her eyes, whichever one was blue, whichever one was green this time.

  “Pia, it’s important you remember the facts,” she said. “Your father molested you and your sister for several years.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the truth. You know it’s the truth. You must not deny it to yourself.”

  “What?”

  Pace moved his hand to Dr. Brandt’s knee but didn’t touch her, just left it there hovering about an inch away. “Let her be.”

  “This is necessary.” She stared back over her shoulder. Her words were sharp and hard as sandstone. “You cannot revert to your benevolent fantasies about him. He was arrested and committed suicide—”

  “My daddy loved me. It was the others ones, the men in those foster families, who tried to force me into doing those things.”

  “Pia, remember our therapy sessions together—”

  “That’s why I had to cut them. If you don’t chop off an ear or two, they just keep coming at you.” Pia’s face was white except for two burning bright spots on her cheeks. “I don’t take that kinda shit off nobody!”

  Hayden laughed, opened a window and the wind blew across his sharp forehead. “What is it with all of you and the knives? This is America. Buy a gun for Chrissake.”

  “They come at me and they get a nice slash across the belly. They pull out their willies and I spike that sticky escargot right in the slimy head.”

  Hayden, no longer laughing, his eyes wide. “Goddamn, girl.”

  Dr. Brandt tried to keep her tone rigid. “Pia, your core personality is timid, passive, and depressed.”

  “Until one of those fuckers lays a hand on me. Only a frigid bitch like you wouldn’t understand. You could never appreciate the situation. You and your sanctimonious attitude. How often did your daddy bounce you on his lap?”

  “Our father who art inflated.”

  “Your aggression is only going to—”

  “I have parameters, Dr. Brandt!” Pia said. “You’re encroaching on my safety zone!”

  “I apologize, Pia.”

  “You just like to hear the stories because they titillate you. It’s why you try to get inside my brain, because you really want to get into my pants. Tell the truth, are you going to hypnotize me again, doctor?”

  “I’ve never hypnotized you.”

  “Oh yes, you did. You wanted me to recover repressed memories. You wanted to hear about the orgies. You wanted me to stop my self-mutilation.”

  Pace could see why so many psychiatrists wound up flipping over the big edge themselves. Always talking, and nobody ever listening.

  “You aren’t a self-mutilator, Pia. Hypnosis is often used to fuse the alters as part of the patient's personality integration process, but that wouldn’t—”

  “So why didn’t you do that to me?”

  “Because that wouldn’t—”

  “Why only to Hayden?”

  “I never—”

  “Yeah,” Hayden said bitterly, “why only me?”

  Dr. Brandt let out a soft sigh. The pulse in her throat glistened and ticked. “You’re already schizophrenic, Pia. Inducing you into a trance would only further your depersonalization. I treated you with the hope of grounding you in reality. For that same reason, I never hypnotized Hayden either.”

  “Oh yes, you did,” Hayden said.

  She clenched her eyes shut in frustration and her lips flattened into a bloodless line. “You all just make each other sicker.”

  Faust said, “Southern State Parkway bear right.”

  Pace thought, Perhaps it’s out of necessity. We feed off one another’s illnesses because it’s there we find what we need, what no one else can give us.

  They drove in silence then for nearly two hours. Pace kept his eyes on the rearview, watching the storm only a few miles behind them coming on a straight run, chasing them east. Occasionally Crumble would bark or Pia would mutter about her father or mother or sister, all of them dead.

  Faust read, “Twenty-seven A, Montauk Highway.”

  They were well out in Suffolk County now, on eastern Long Island, about thirty miles past Bayport, the town where Pacella and his wife had once owned a home. Where he tried to share his love of literature with a bunch of kids who stared at him with apathy or such outright hatred that he used to shrivel beneath their gazes. His voice would crack while he read aloud from Poe, Hawthorne, Lawrence, Joyce.

  Faust leaned forward and whispered in Pace’s ear. “Are you all right, Will?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “You’re grinding your teeth.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You do that when you’re upset.”

  “I’ll try to watch it.”

  “Feel free to discuss anything with me that you’d like. I’m your friend.”

  “Okay.”

  They were getting to an area of the island that he didn’t know very well.

  Pace said, “Map?”

  Faust scratched his beard and asked, “You want a map? I don’t think we have any in the car. Maybe you could stop at a gas station? Do they still hand out maps?”

  “Not for about thirty years. I want to talk to Map.”

  “You’re remembering more,” Pia said.

  “Stop feeding his fantasy, Will,” Dr. Brandt said.

  “We need him to live. It’s as simple as that.”

  She swallowed another mewling complaint and simply whispered, “For the love of God, how did it come to this?”

  “Good question.”

  It took a couple of minutes before another of Faust’s alternates rose to the surface. Map was an ex-Wall Street stockbroker who’d lost everything to cocaine and insider trading. His wife divorced him and took their infant daughter to Des Moines. Now Map lived in the bowels of the Manhattan subway
system. He spent most of his day panhandling or in the New York Library, memorizing every map, address, and phone number in the world.

  Headlights illuminated the interior of the Chevy. Pace checked the rearview and saw Map there. He looked like he’d spent the last couple of days binging on crack. He was thirty-eight and could pass for sixty. His hands were covered with infected rat bites, head knotted with lumps and contusions from being rolled so often in the tunnels.

  “Map, we’re on Old Montauk Highway on the eastern end of Long Island, about to enter Bridgehampton. Show me how to get to #11 Rudy Road.”

  “You’ve gone too far already,” Map said. It was a little tough understanding him because his teeth were mostly black slivers that had slashed a fair percentage of his tongue away. He couldn’t stop sniffing and the blood sluiced around inside his sinuses. “Double back at the next street. Take your first right and head north up Long View Trail. First left, then a right into a series of curves. #11 Rudy Road is off on its own, about a quarter mile from the nearest neighbor.”

  “Thanks.”

  “My wife and I used to eat out every Friday night at Le Feu in Southampton, and then walk along the beach afterward,” Map said. The sorrow choked him as he coughed out his words. “We’d drink wine in the surf before making love in the sand bathed in blue moonlight.”

  “Is there a diner or a rest stop nearby?”

  Map couldn’t speak for a moment, hacking, keyed up with emotion. He hid his face in his scarred hands, then swallowed his anguish down. “Yes...gas and food, coming up on the left. Point eight miles.”

  Tears rolled down Dr. Brandt’s face. Was she crying for herself or for them? In the dim interior of the car, her tears appeared like black, disfiguring scratches on her cheeks. He was surprised that he wasn’t moved more, that such a lovely woman weeping beside him didn’t fill him with heartache. Pia held a clutch of tissues and Dr. Brandt took one and dabbed her eyes.

  “It’s my fault,” she said. “I knew this would happen. You’ve all relapsed. I should have been stronger and trusted the police.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” Pace said, thinking of the detectives who’d tried to crush his hand at the hospital. The cops who couldn’t catch Jack. “You made the right choice.”

  “We have to dump the car. It’s bugged.”

  “Are you certain?” Hayden asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Shouldn’t we have gotten rid of it sooner then? Why did we take it all the way out here?”

  “I want to keep Kaltzas close but not too close.”

  “Ah.”

  “Hey,” Pia cried. “I paid for this car. I love this car. This car is my best friend. Eight hundred smackers.”

  “How did you get the money?” Dr. Brandt asked.

  “I earned it.”

  “How?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Prostituting yourself?”

  Dr. Brandt put that tone right back in her voice. She really didn’t have a soft hand about these things.

  “Stop looking down on me, you bitch!” Pia shouted, hitting a high crazed note that hung in the car. Then, the way all the bipolars did, swinging the other way. “I’m hungry. There’s a sign over there that says they’ve got Double Cheesy Bacony Burgers here.”

  “Double Cheesy Bacony Burgers made your way!” Faust read. “Our father who art indigestion.”

  “I want one of those.”

  Pace circled the diner and parking area twice, then backed into a space near the dumpsters behind the kitchen. It afforded cover and provided a good vantage point to see anyone coming in off the highway.

  “We going to steal another car?” Hayden said. “Maybe one of these SUV’s?”

  “No,” Pace told him.

  “Then what?”

  “One will be along soon.”

  Hayden frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Vindi. Or whoever Kaltzas has tracking us. We sit here long enough and they’ll worry, thinking we boosted another car. They’ll have to do a spot check in person. They’ll be showing up in the next hour.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Either behind us a few miles or running parallel on one of the county roads.”

  “So what are we doing here?” Hayden asked.

  “Lingering.”

  “And getting me a burger?” Pia said.

  “And getting everybody some food. Is there a screwdriver in the glove box?”

  “Why would there be a screwdriver in there?”

  “Because old cars like this need a lot of fine-tuning. You use it to adjust the timing chain and carburetor, tighten the clamps on the air hoses which usually work loose after a couple thousand miles.”

  “No wonder this thing’s been running like a piece of shit.”

  Pace was about to tell them that Pacella’s father had a Chevy like this, but somehow, Pacella’s father was his own father. Sometimes William Pacella was somebody else entirely, and sometimes they shared the same background, like brothers. “My father owned a Chevy just like this. He taught me how to drive on it.”

  He reached across Dr. Brandt’s lap and opened the glove box, found a three-inch flathead and put it in his pocket.

  “I want a damn Double Cheesy Bacony Burger!”

  “Me too,” Hayden said.

  “We’re all hungry,” Dr. Brandt said. “We haven’t eaten all day.”

  “Go inside and order enough for everybody,” Pace told her. “We’ll eat out here.”

  She did as he said, wandering into the neon glare in a kind of puzzled daze. He wondered why none of the other psychiatrists at the hospital had seen how close to cracking she actually was.

  She returned with the food and Pia squealed with delight and everyone ate in silence, the car growing more and more crowded by the second until Pace had to lean his head out the window to breathe. There were kids in the backseat singing and playing with their french fries, old men having a tough time eating the hamburger because of their poorly-fitted dentures.

  Pace ate little and finished quickly, the way Jack used to do on stakeout in Brooklyn keeping an eye on the Ganooch and his people. No liquids so you didn’t have to take a piss break. He waited and watched while the others finished their food.

  It took seventy minutes before Kaltzas’s men arrived. Pace saw the white Jaguar slowly turn into the rest stop. It wasn’t exactly the most inconspicuous car, but Kaltzas seemed willing to trade guile for grandeur. Perhaps impression meant everything. The Jag circled the area and spotted the Chevy almost immediately. They parked in a far-off corner, engine humming. The windows were tinted black.

  “You all stay here,” Pace said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “You can’t, Will.” Dr. Brandt touched him on the chest, smoothing her hand across him in a lover’s intimate gesture. His scars began to heat. What had he done with this woman?

  “Hold on,” Faust said. “It might be Kaltzas himself. There might be several armed men in that car. Do you want help?”

  “No,” Pace said, his fear and hatred taking on a thousand forms within him. “I’ve got plenty.”

  eight

  Sometimes you just stepped right up.

  Pace walked across the parking lot and knocked on the driver’s window of the Jag. He backed off a couple of feet and stood there with his arms crossed over his chest.

  Mist rose up from the lowland grass edging the rest stop. The storm would be blowing in from the west soon. It wanted him. He could feel the desire on the wind. He could taste salt on his lips and caught a flash of Jane again. The two of them stepping across the sand, somewhere out here on the east end, down at one of the private beaches. She’d take a mouthful of wine and kiss him, passing the wine to him. He hated the taste but remembered laughing.

  The engine of the Jag hummed quietly.

  Maybe this cat had all day to sit around playing games, but Pace felt the need to get on with it. He cocked his head and raised his eyebrows
, held his hands open in a gesture of geniality. He got in close and tapped his fingers on the hood.

  Still nothing happened.

  You could take a lot, but you really hated when they fucking ignored you.

  “Okay,” he said, smiling, and came around the front of the car.

  Pace took out the small screwdriver and touched it to the center of the driver’s window. He hardly had to apply any pressure at all before the glass shattered.

  The door opened.

  Out came one hell of an ugly bastard. Short bowed legs, thick stubby arms, wild tangle of beard, and a barrel chest. Coarse black hair twisted across his huge head that protruded like a chunk of rock breaking from the shallows. He had a large nose with permanently flared nostrils, giving him a brutish, bullish appearance. The Minotaur.

  He gave off an artificial milieu of refinement. It was something he’d worked at for a long time but still didn’t come naturally to him. He moved slowly, the way wealthy snobs often did, as if they refused to lower themselves to the same constraints as the rest of the world. He looked like someone who might spend the day listening to Brahms, visiting art galleries, dining on quails’ eggs before kicking in the door of a retirement home and strangling an old lady in her bed.

  The Minotaur, coming at you.

  Wearing a three thousand-dollar suit and a huge diamond stickpin that caught a flare of headlights and sent a rainbow pinwheeling into darkness. He brushed shards of glass from his wide shoulders and shook it from his hair.

  “It’s a neat trick,” Pace said. “Most people don’t realize how easily safety glass breaks. It’s designed that way in case a car ever goes off a pier and sinks underwater. There’s no way to open the door or roll down the window then, because of the water pressure, so you just tap the glass with a screwdriver or nail file and it gives way.”

  “I shall remember,” the bull said with a slight Greek accent, “if I ever drive off a pier.”

  “You’re Vindi?”

  “You do not recall?” The voice had a certain heavy resonance with the hint of a growl, a touch of implied menace.