Apparent Wind

by Dallas Murphy

  Big Al winked over his bony shoulder at his son, then turned on Duncan: “You go on back to Mr. Donald Throckmorton Sikes, and do whatever he tells you to do. Catch on? Then you come tell me about it. You just became a spy for Big Al. Either a spy—or an inmate. Take your pick, punk.”

  “Okay, you win. What about my ten grand?”

  “You get it. Nobody can say Big Al Broadnax don’t pay his help. Ain’t that right, Sheriff Plotner?” The rictus returned to Big Al’s face, flushed with victory in clear view of his only surviving son.

  “Mission accomplished,” said Duncan Feeney back at the boat, bounding down the companionway.

  Doom had seen that grin before, back when Feeney told Ted Koppel what an honor it was to have discovered Splendor for the American people. At least someone was having fun.

  “And here’s the take.” Duncan slapped a pile of cash on the navigation table, where Doom had taken to sitting while he planned, plotted, and conspired. “Five thousand bucks cash money.”

  Marvis Puller marked it down in the books.

  That night Bert, Doom, and Rosalind went sailing in Biscayne Bay. Under a luminescent moon they practiced setting, jibing, and dousing the starcut spinnaker with Doom doing the foredeck work—he had just finished reading a spinnaker book—Rosalind on the helm, Bert on halyard, sheets, and guy. No one even mentioned Big Al Broadnax, Donny Sikes, or in any way the matter at hand. They discussed jibing angles that increased the apparent wind speed, which Bert called “hotting up the ’chute,” and he showed Doom how to trim the colorful sail to keep a little luff curl in the shoulder. “A well-trimmed ’chute ain’t supposed to look good to the naked eye,” he said, “twitterin’ on the leading edge like it does,” and he eased the sheet until the shoulder twittered. “Feel the boat speed pick up?”

  Doom felt it. It felt good.

  THE HIT

  Lucas Hogaboom met Binx and Ridly at the Dugout in the Snowy Egret Shopping Plaza. Lucas picked out a dark, sticky booth in the back for privacy and room to stretch out his throbbing leg. It was swollen to twice its normal size, and soon it would erupt through the plasterlike molten lava through the earth’s crust. He imagined he saw hairline cracks already spiderwebbing the cast. He popped three more hits of Percodan and one codeine, washing them down with a Bud Lite.

  “We found him,” said Binx. “We followed that chick with the tits, and she led us right to him. That was Ridly’s idea—follow the tits—that’s what we did, and he was right.”

  “So where is he?” The pain made Lucas’s eyes water. Maybe another codeine.

  “You know where Old Route One goes up through Key Largo? There’s a beat-to-shit fish camp up there called Black Caesar’s, run by this tough nigger.”

  “What’s the nigger’s name?” asked Lucas.

  “Black Caesar.”

  Why did he have to deal with toads, Ridly was asking himself, when he should be president of a forward-looking alternative-energy program that burned barnyard droppings, as a result of which he would win prizes and be invited to speak on the floor of the Senate?

  “Okay, boys, here it is. Listen up. I want you to kill Loomis,” Lucas Hogaboom ordered.

  “Kill…him?” said Binx.

  “What are you, nuts! Kill him? You didn’t take your medication today, you crazy cracker,” said Ridly.

  “Want me to twist one?” asked Binx. Binx hated discord.

  “Five grand apiece,” offered Lucas. Actually, Big Al had said ten apiece, but Lucas figured he was owed a brokerage fee.

  “Would you get that fucking Pillar of Hercules away from me? Stinks like an armadillo. Thanks. He wants us to kill the gink. Can you believe it, Binx? He thinks this is fucking TV. He thinks he’s dealing with Tubbs and Crockett or some assholes. You got to get out of the sun, pal, quick.”

  “I got some good shit,” said Binx.

  “Okay, Christ,” said Lucas Hogaboom, “you don’t wanna do it, just say no.”

  “No.”

  “Fine. What about you, Binx?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Lucas…This whole thing sort of reminds me of my brother Glen.”

  “Your brother Glen?” asked Lucas.

  “Reminds me of the time Glen and me rented a boat and went fishin’ up on Lake Okeechobee. We found this spot back in a twisty channel, all kinds of forks and dead ends. We caught us a boatload of largemouth in a half hour. My brother Glen says, ‘We gotta mark this spot so’s we can come back here.’ I said, ‘How’re we gonna do that, Glen?’ Glen says, ‘We’ll paint an X in the bottom of the boat when it’s directly over the spot.’ So I said, ‘Glen, you are stupid!…How do you know we’ll get the same boat?’ ”

  On the TV above the bar, someone said, “It’s not just your car, it’s your freedom.”

  Fuck ’em, Lucas would to do it himself. Twenty thousand was big bucks. With that kind of bread he could open himself a little business selling the hides of endangered species. He’d killed a biker in Oakland, California, back in the sixties with no problem. However, that had been an accident. Once he had stabbed a guy in the Winn Dixie frozen-food section, but that guy had pissed him off. Loomis had never pissed him off. The asshole in the Mets cap with the wig—now, he pissed Lucas off. Maybe he’d off him too while he was at it. Lucas popped another codeine and washed it down with the dregs of Binx’s beer. Sure, he could do it himself. Easy. Just pretend Loomis was an alligator.

  BIBLE SCHOOL

  The camera lens peered down at Snack from the hole Doom and Marvis had cut in the ceiling. The Annes had run control cable from the camera to the adjacent Goldilocks bungalow, where now they waited with Doom. The lens looked to Snack like a shark’s eye. No, more like the eye of an idol, a craven image.

  Snack was thumbing through the Gideon Bible while he waited, but he found no solace in its antique language and eccentric characters, a crowd of bearded crazies wandering around the hardscrabble desert waving swords, what did they expect but to get hives and boils and shit dusty stones. Who was that asshole who tied up his son and made to chop off his head because God told him to as a test? Esau? Maybe Big Al thought God told him to blow up his own son in a shopping center. Hell, maybe He did. And who was this guy Gideon? With trembling fingers he twisted a fat one and went out back, where gleeful mosquitoes homed in, to smoke it. Something big moved in the bushes— “Wha—!”

  “It’s me,” said Doom. “Are you all right?”

  “He’s late.”

  “He’ll be here.”

  Snack’s sativa massaged the kinks in his neck. “Sure, great. Fine. No shit…I’m scared.”

  “Then let’s forget the whole thing. There are other ways.”

  “I mean I ain’t scared of the guy. I’m scared of fucking up. You’re a smart guy, I can see that. You probably did real well in school. Went to Yale College or somewhere. Me, I didn’t, and I ain’t all that bright to begin with.”

  “That’s not what I hear.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re clearly a very bright person. They just took away your self-esteem. That’s what schools and families do. Besides, Rosalind says you’re bright.”

  “Rosalind says that?”

  “She also said you’re good with animals. She says you’re kind.”

  “Really? She did? I like animals. Birds too.”

  “Do you like fish?”

  “Fish? Sure. Fish are very interesting creatures.”

  “I used to know a big barracuda.”

  “Barracuda are great.”

  “Would you like to be Environmental Officer when things loosen up? That has nothing to do with whether you decide to go through with this tonight or not.”

  “Environmental Officer?”

  “The wildlife and the environment need protection. You could test the waters to make sure no one is dumping toxic waste, poaching, or otherwise disturbing the balance of nature.”

  “…You want some of this? I grew it myself.”

  Doom took a toke…Whew.
“You’re obviously a man in tune with the herbage.”

  Snack giggled. Doom returned to the Goldilocks bungalow to wait with Rosalind, Longnecker, and the Annes.

  Snack was thinking about his uniform—maybe simple khakis with an American flag on the shoulder and his name tag, white letters against a black background, on the front pocket—when headlights flooded the front window. Snack knocked on the wall and listened. Did the cameras come on? Snack couldn’t hear them whirring.

  Snack opened the door before anyone knocked on it. He froze at the sight of Roger Vespucci.

  Roger said, “Step back,” and then he barged in. Donny Sikes waited in the car while Roger searched the Baby Bear, looked in the closet, the bathroom, under the bed. “What a shit hole,” Roger pronounced. Snack was wearing a Total Immersion T-shirt a size too small and a tight pair of warmup pants, no shoes, so Roger didn’t bother to search him for concealed weapons. Roger went out to get Donny Sikes. Guy hadn’t had a piña in two days, unless he was sneaking them, but what for? They were his piñas. A sober Donny Sikes made Roger edgy.

  What was Snack going to do? He couldn’t tell lies on Roger Vespucci while he was in the room.

  “Well, Sennacherib Broadnax, how do you do? Donny Sikes here.”

  Snack shook his hand. Snack’s mouth was almost too dry to speak through.

  “Sennacherib. Now, there’s a name you don’t often hear.”

  Snack tried to say that people called him Snack.

  “What?”

  “Uh, could we talk in private?”

  “This is my associate, Roger Vespucci. I don’t have any secrets from Roger.”

  “Forget it. I talk to you alone or nobody.”

  “I’ll be right outside that door, boss.” Roger turned to Snack, paused chillingly, and said, “You try anything cute, I do hideous things to your torso before you die.” Then he walked out into the insect night.

  Donny sprawled on the bed and folded his hands behind his neck. Snack thought this guy was supposed to be a bigshot. He looked like a little boy, baby flesh with no hair on his arms. Roger Vespucci came off like a true badass, but this Donny Sikes looked like bully bait, and that made Snack feel better. Plus the sativa was riding the curl of a wave between his eyes. Snack sat in a chair. A framed sign on the wall above Donny’s head said TO MAKE A HOUSE A HOME—ADD LOVE.

  “What do you want? Your note didn’t say exactly.”

  “I want you to leave my father alone. He’s an old man. He’ll die soon, and you’ll get what you want anyhow. You don’t need to blow him up.”

  “Whoa, hang on there, Nellie. Blow him up? What the hell do you mean, blow him up?”

  “Blow him up. My old man.”

  “Somebody blew up your old man?”

  “Somebody tried. You.”

  Donny Sikes was getting hot. Slow it down and take control here. “Let’s turn on the air-conditioning.”

  “It’s broke. If you didn’t try to blow up my father, how do you explain this—” Snack picked up a paper bag from under the TV and tossed it on the bed beside Donny.

  Donny gasped when he saw the bomb in the bag. “I never—!”

  “Bullshit! That guy Roger Vespucci told us where it was planted!”

  “Roger—?”

  “Sure, he said you were down here to ruin my father. He said you were a crazy asshole, and he wanted out. He was sick of making blender drinks for you. Then he told us you planted the bomb on our property, and my father paid Vespucci ten grand to find out where you put it.”

  A lump of hurt rose in Donny’s throat. Any number of dirtbags would betray Donny Sikes at the drop of a hat, but he never imagined Roger Vespucci would. They’d been together since 1964, when Donny hired Roger to break the Building and Service Employees Union strike by blowing up the union hall—blowing…up? Aw, shit. “I don’t believe you.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “You want proof? I got proof. I got a picture—” Snack pulled a snapshot from the pages of the Gideon Bible and handed it to Donny.

  The picture, apparently a candid, showed Duncan Feeney walking down the front steps of Big Al Broadnax’s Greco-Moorish mansion. Donny Sikes peered at it for a long time. Donny Sikes had never had any real friends, only pretenders. He’d never known a warm bosom, except for Gramps’s, but Gramps died before he was born, leaving him alone in a chill world, the sound of his own weeping echoing. “It’s blurry. Why’s it blurry?” Donny demanded. Yet the Broadnax mansion, in fine focus, was for real. Donny had pictures of it back on the boat, so he knew the Greco-Moorish mansion when he saw it.

  “You can’t miss that big droopy mustache.”

  That was so. The Fu Manchu loomed large. “Roger!” bellowed Donny Sikes.

  The door crashed open, and Roger Vespucci barged in, gun drawn, cocked, ready.

  “Roger, will you kill this man, please?”

  “Sure, boss—”

  Doom and the Annes gasped in the Goldilocks cottage. No one even had time to remove the earphones— But then Donny Sikes said, “Never mind.”

  “Never mind?”

  Snack thought for a moment he’d peed in his warmups, but it was merely sweat.

  “Let’s go, Roger.”

  Roger Vespucci liked Donny better when the piñas were sloshing around in his head, brain bilge. Dry, Donny was growing weird. Never mind?

  GLUB

  Ridly’s estranged wife’s brother used his hobnail motorcycle boot to kick in the door to Ridly’s second-floor apartment situated above the abandoned Bijou, which died soon after the Cineplex Twelve opened its doors out at the Spoonbill Mall. Now the cracked and weathered marquee letters said I’M A FOOL FOR JESUS, WHOSE _OOL ARE YOU. This shabby section of Tequesta Key with shell stores and forlorn motels, some from as far back as the tin-can tourist days, was slated for demolition, making way for the proposed Manatee Mall. It would even have a genuine New York deli run by Jews.

  Ridly owed four months’ worth of child support, three hundred dollars each month. Big deal. Guys with fewer natural gifts than Ridly spent three bills in a single night, on surf-and-turf dinners, tickets to Cats.

  Ridly’s brother-in-law, whom everyone called Wheezer because he smoked four packs of Pall Malls a day, didn’t say a word for a long time. He sat on Ridly’s rumpled army cot and cracked his knuckles by bending each finger in turn against the point of his chin, three distinct cracks per finger, each finger the size of a pool-cue butt.

  “Wanna beer, Wheezer, discuss the matter?”

  “Phyllis says I should break both your legs, you scum sucker. I even brought along this bat to make Phyllis happy. But I says to Phyllis, give the scum sucker a chance, he can’t pay up he’s in traction out to Broadnax General. I says further, Phyllis, look, he don’t pay up by next week, then I break both his legs. Here you are livin’ the lap of luxury, you ain’t got money to support your own little girl. I mean, what the fuck kinda father are you?”

  Ridly knew that Wheezer had about reached the end of his appeal process on a two-year-old grand theft, auto, rap. If Ridly could only give him the slip for maybe another month, this cretin might be off to Raiford, making instead of switching license plates. Ridly also knew that Wheezer would make mush of his tibias and never give it a thought, go out and hot-wire a Lincoln Town Car. “How about a Colt .45, Wheezer, wet the old whistle?”

  Wheezer didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no. He just continued cracking his giant digits against his chin. Suddenly Wheezer made an example of Ridly’s bedside lamp, smashed it with a single overhand swing of the Louisville Slugger. Shards were still ricocheting off the walls when Wheezer waddled into the john and beat the sink off the wall. Then he swung away at the commode. It cracked in half like a coconut. Rusty water sloshed around Wheezer’s size-fifteen-and-a-half hightops you could safely put to sea in if you didn’t bring too many friends along. Wordlessly, Wheezer laid the bat across his shoulder like an on-deck hitter and left.

  As a di
rect result of Wheezer’s visit, Ridly phoned Lucas Hogaboom from the corner to ask if he needed a driver for the killing and what did drivers get these days per trip? Then Ridly stopped at Binx’s hovel to ask if he wanted to go along. Binx was dropping dead flies into his ant farm.

  “Jeez, I better twist one for the road.”

  Binx and Ridly waited in the car outside Black Caesar’s while Lucas Hogaboom hobbled in on his crutches. His leg had begun to stink inside the cast like Sheriff Plotner. That was probably a bad sign. However, the codeine made his thumping gait feel light, airy, almost balletic. The place was as dark as a small intestine. Lucas clobbered into the point of a table and whined in pain. His eyes adjusting, he saw six white guys wearing greasy baseball caps crammed into a booth. Except for them and the nigger behind the bar, the dive was empty. Not counting the nigger, it looked like Lucas’s kind of place. He took a stool.

  Black Caesar, hospitable publican, said, “Yeah, what?”

  Lucas ordered a beer and placed a twenty on the bar. “Keep the change.” Lot of niggers’d do most anything for change of a twenty.

  “There ain’t no change,” said Black Caesar.

  “There ain’t?”

  “Twenty bucks a beer, unless you want imported.”

  Lucas put another twenty on the Formica. “I’m looking for a old pal of mine name of Loomis.”

  Black Caesar rubbed his chin musingly. “Loomis, huh? Loomis?…Let me see. My memory is sketchy, you know what I mean? Must be because of my combat experiences in Grenada.”

  Lucas put still another twenty on the bar.

  Black Caesar smoothed out the wrinkles, contemplated the bill. “You’re a pal of his, huh? Where do you know him from? Upstate? You a legislator? You a man of the people?”

  “We was in the navy together. We had some times in the Red Sea, old Loomis and me. Yep, great sea, the Red. He calls hisself Doom.” Lucas tried the power of another twenty. “Doom Loomis. You know him or what?”