by Pete Hautman
“Let’s see it,” Jimmy Swann said. His voice, which Hyatt remembered as being on the light side, had taken on a shredded quality.
Jimmy Swann had evolved as well. Hyatt remembered him as a short, fidgety, and slightly plump young man with ruddy cheeks and an immaculate white smile. In short, a reasonably normal-looking human being, once you got past the woven copper headband.
Apparently, radio waves had become a larger part of Jimmy’s reality in the past couple years. The copper headband had evolved into a complex appurtenance, which now included brass tubing, bits of colored foil, and a fulgurite that Jimmy had found on the beach during his Boy Scout days. The last time Hyatt had seen the fulgurite—a root-shaped piece of fused silica formed by the action of lightning on sand—it had been displayed on Jimmy’s dresser. It now formed the centerpiece to the metal sculpture on his head. Shanks of long, matted hair threaded through the apparatus and spilled down over his bony shoulders.
The new Jimmy—copper, brass, foil, and fulgurite included—could not have weighed more than one hundred twenty pounds. Other than the headpiece, he wore nothing but a pair of oversized Levis that rode so low on his emaciated hips that a tuft of pubic hair showed above the waistband. His pasty skin looked as if it hadn’t seen the sun in years.
“It’s me, Jimmy. Hy.”
“I know who you are. Where’s the money?”
“Uh, let’s just talk about that.” Hyatt still did not know what money Jimmy was talking about. “How about you put the gun down?”
“You owe me, man.”
“I understand that. Uh, how much was it again?”
“You know how much it is. Three hundred forty-six dollars. Let’s have it!”
Hyatt tried to remember. Did he owe Jimmy Swann three hundred forty-six dollars? It was certainly possible. When Hyatt owed someone money, he made it a policy to put it out of his mind until payment was demanded.
He said, “I didn’t pay you that? Hey, no problem. I’ve got the money—” Hy slapped his wallet, which contained about fourteen dollars. “—and I’ll pay you. Aren’t you going to invite me in? Offer me a beer or something?”
Jimmy’s posture softened. He let the shotgun barrel dip—now it was pointing at Hyatt’s knees. “Who’s in the vette?”
Hyatt shrugged. “Just some assholes.”
“They pissed off my neighbors, man. I don’t need that shit.”
“Like I said, they’re assholes.”
Jimmy grinned. Everything else had changed, but the smile was exactly as Hyatt remembered. He shifted his grip on the shotgun, letting it dangle from one hand, the barrel now aimed in the vicinity of Hyatt’s right foot, giving him a better look at the weapon. Despite all the tinfoil, the gun appeared to be operational. The trigger was clear of obstructions as was the ejection port. The last two inches of barrel jutted ominously from the tinfoil casing.
“Come on in,” Jimmy said, backing down the hallway, which was lined on either side with stacks of magazines, books, and newspapers. Jimmy had always been a sucker for ordering subscriptions every year during the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, but the situation had gotten way out of hand in the two years since Hyatt had last been there. Access to the upstairs was completely blocked by stacks of magazines chest high on the steps, and to get to the kitchen required climbing over a pile of furniture chinked with periodicals. Jimmy led him into the sitting room where, it seemed, he now spent nearly all of his time.
The center of the room was filled with an unfolded sofabed piled with books and magazines. A full-size refrigerator, a microwave oven on a stand, and a large-screen television set stood around the bed like relatives visiting a dying uncle. A collection of empty pizza boxes filled the fireplace. The room reeked of stale beer and sweat and aging deep-dish pizzas.
“I just love what you’ve done with the place,” Hyatt said.
“I don’t get out much. Fact, I don’t get out at all.” Jimmy opened the refrigerator. “You want a beer?”
“You know what I really want? I want you to loan me that shotgun.” In the old days, Jimmy had always responded positively to bullying.
Jimmy closed the refrigerator door and faced Hyatt, renewing his grip on the shotgun. “Why should I?” he said, his tone of voice suddenly that of a child. “It’s mine!”
“I just need it for a minute, Jimmy.” Hyatt took a step toward him. “Then I’ll pay you.”
“Three hundred forty-six dollars?” Jimmy’s tongue crawled out of his mouth and explored his upper lip.
“That’s right.”
For a few seconds, it looked as if Jimmy, confronted by Hyatt’s superior intellect, would simply hand over the gun. Then his expression changed. He seemed to be listening to something—possibly an emanation from his headgear. After a moment he nodded, smiled triumphantly, raised the gun, and aimed it at Hyatt’s chest. “Pay me now.”
Hyatt did not like the way things were going. In the past, he had usually been able to tell Jimmy Swann what to do, but even then he had sometimes encountered interference from the local radio wave gods. Once Jimmy got a message from “certain interested parties,” he could become quite stubborn.
Hyatt said, “I’m going to pay you, Jimmy. But tell me something. Why do I owe you three hundred forty-six dollars?”
Jimmy glared. “You owe everybody money.”
“I know that. But why three hundred forty-six dollars?”
Jimmy’s eyes rolled up into his head, then snapped back into focus as the message came through. “That’s how much I owe the gas company,” he said.
Hyatt had thought it might be something like that.
Unfortunately, in Jimmy’s mind, admitting the spurious assignation of debt did nothing to cancel it. The shotgun was still there, and Jimmy still wanted his money, and Hyatt didn’t have it. He was starting to wish that he’d taken his chances with Chip.
Hyatt squinted and stared at the cone-shaped coil of copper tubing that crowned Jimmy’s headpiece. He said, “That’s odd.”
Jimmy tried to look up. “What’s odd?”
Hyatt said, “Look what it’s doing.”
“What? What what’s doing?”
“That.” Hyatt pointed. “There’s a huge cockroach on your wires, Jimmy.” He wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but when all else failed, it paid to improvise.
Jimmy took a step back, as if trying to get out from under his headpiece. “Where is it? What’s it doing?”
“It’s chewing on the wires. Have you been experiencing any degradation of signal quality?”
Jimmy’s jaw dropped. He reached up with one hand.
“Don’t touch it!” Hyatt warned.
Jimmy jerked his arm down. “Where is it?”
“It’s on the coil now. It’s moving down the coil. Oh my god!”
Jimmy dropped the shotgun and grabbed the assemblage of wires and tubing and tried to tear it from his head, shrieking as shanks of hair, tangled in amongst the wires, refused to let go. Suddenly, he noticed that his shotgun had appeared in Hyatt’s hands.
Hyatt said, “Hold still.” He aimed the shotgun at the copper coil.
Jimmy dropped his hands and screamed, “No!”
Hyatt fired. Lead pellets ripped through copper, rattled off of steel and fulgurite. The force of the blast jerked Jimmy’s head back, sending him staggering onto the sofa-bed. He fell across the mattress, sending several dozen magazines sliding off onto the floor. Hyatt pumped a new shell into the chamber.
“I think I got it,” he said. His ears were ringing.
Jimmy, his eyes showing white all the way around his irises, reached up and explored his shredded headset with shaking fingers. “I can’t hear you, man. I’m not receiving.”
“That’s okay,” Hyatt said. “I didn’t have anything more to say.”
A five-year-old, beige four-door Plymouth Reliant, Crow had once read, was the least likely of all vehicles to be noticed or remembered, thus making it the perfect surveillance
vehicle. That being the case, a three-decade-old, lemon-yellow, hood-scooped, gas-guzzling muscle car had to fall somewhere near the other end of the conspicuousness spectrum, right up there with the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.
The two kids eyeing the GTO looked to be about twelve. They stood a few yards away on the sidewalk, talking and pointing at Crow and his car as though they were discussing a museum display: white man in automobile, circa 1969. Crow rolled down his window and beckoned them with a crooked finger. The taller kid, who had been doing most of the talking, fell silent. After a moment he took a cautious step forward and said, “Wuzapp’n.”
“Not much,” Crow said.
“That your car?”
“That’s right,” Crow said.
“You with thems?” He looked toward the Corvette parked beside Hyatt’s BMW.
“Nope. I’m a good guy.”
“How ’bout you take us for a drive?”
Crow laughed. The kids laughed, too. They edged closer. Crow said, pointing at the gated Victorian, “You know who lives in that house over there?”
The shorter kid said, “The scary dude.”
The other kid said, “He ain’t so scary. He just mess up in the head.”
“He scare me. He got a magic gun.”
“A what?” Crow asked.
The kids looked at each other. The tall kid licked his lips and turned away.
“You a cop?” the short one asked.
“Nope. Are you a gangster?”
The kid shook his head, taking Crow’s inquiry very seriously. “He got wires coming out his head.”
“Wires?”
“Uh-huh. And he gots this big silver gun. He shot Scoopy’s ass for going in his yard.”
“Who’s Scoopy?”
“Scoopy don’t live here no more.”
Crow heard a muffled report. “What was that?”
“Sometimes he just like to shoot.”
Crow saw the front door to the Victorian open. Hyatt Hilton emerged and started toward the gate. He had something long and silver in his hands. Crow lost sight of him behind a lilac bush, then the gate swung open and Hyatt stepped out onto the sidewalk and shouldered the silver object, pointing it at the front of the Corvette. Crow saw a puff appear at the end of the silver object and heard the blast. Blue smoke erupted from the Corvette’s rear tires and the car rocketed backward, in Crow’s direction. Hyatt fired again. The vette, still smoking its tires, suddenly slued around in a one-eighty. Hyatt’s third shot was drowned out by the sound of clashing gears and the roaring engine. The vette screeched past Crow’s position, its windshield shattered to opacity but still intact, the driver hanging his head out the window to see. Within two seconds it was out of sight, leaving behind a dissipating cloud of smoke and the reek of burnt rubber.
Crow sat with his mouth hanging open, his brain unable to accept what he was seeing as real. Hyatt had run out into the street, still holding the bizarre-looking gun against his shoulder. Crow suddenly remembered the two kids he’d been talking to, but when he looked for them they had disappeared. He returned his attention to Hyatt and found himself looking at the end of Hyatt’s weapon. The fact that it was more than half a block away did little to make him feel more comfortable. Crow jammed the Hurst shifter into first gear just as Hyatt let fly. The sound of pellets rattling his hood and windshield was distinctive—a hundred micro-impacts, all in the space of a millisecond. Crow cranked the wheel and stomped on the gas pedal, spinning the car, leaving a pair of hook-shaped rubber marks on the street. He made it all the way to third gear without ever taking his right foot off the floor.
Chuckles and Chip each had their own way of dealing with their recent near-death experience. Chip became uncharacteristically voluble, dissecting the confrontation in military terms.
“His mistake was to carry his weapon in full view, giving his opponents time to analyze the situation and neutralize the attack. We could have preempted his strike with our own firelight. A surgical strike.” Chip subscribed to Soldier of Fortune magazine.
Chuckles, staring at the crumbled remains of his windshield, grunted. “I’m just happy to be alive,” he said. He rubbed the grinning skull tattoo on his forearm with his thumb, an unconscious habit. Polly was always complaining about his tattoo. Said the skull was a holdover from his Death Program days, but Chuckles liked it. He called it Good Luck Charlie.
“You’re suffering from post-traumatic stress. You should increase your vitamin C intake.”
“Hey, screw you, man. You see what he done to my ride? Polly didn’t say nothin’ about the dude havin’ no shotgun. Fucked up my glass, fucked up my paint. Coulda been my face, man.”
“It’s all part of the job.”
“All I know is, next time that bitch go down on me, I gonna be looking out both eyes and that ain’t no lie.”
Chip said, “She … what did you say?”
20
Play to behavior, not personalities.
—Crow’s rules
THE MORE CROW THOUGHT about it, the madder he got. By the time he got home and got out and looked at the side of his car and saw the hundreds of tiny gray scuff marks on the hood and the right quarter panel, he was mad enough to turn around and drive over to Hyatt’s house to wait for him. So he did. He parked his car around the corner where Hyatt wouldn’t see it and walked up to the front door and leaned on the bell. Carmen answered the door wordlessly, blinking at him with sleepy eyes, containing not a scintilla of recognition. Crow told himself that he shouldn’t care, but it still irritated him that Carmen never seemed to recognize him.
Crow said, “Mind if I come in?”
“I don’t think so,” Carmen said. She tried to close the door, but Crow blocked it with his arm. “I really need to see Hy,” Crow said.
“He’s not here.”
“I know that.”
Carmen glared at him for a moment, then released the door. Crow followed her into the living room. She flopped onto the sofa, lit a cigarette. The apartment smelled like vomit. A cheerful man on the television was demonstrating a mop. Carmen regarded Crow through a haze of smoke.
“What’s your name again?” she asked.
“Howard Holiday,” Crow said. “I’m Hy’s brother.”
Carmen snorted smoke. “Yeah, right.”
“When do you expect him back?”
“About an hour ago. He went out for coffee.”
Crow sniffed. “What’s that smell?”
Carmen shrugged and turned her attention to the television. Crow watched her watching the infomercial. She was attractive enough, he supposed. Regular features; full lips; big, heavy-lidded, brown eyes. Auburn hair worn long and loose. A pair of jeans, faded almost to white, all holes and frayed edges, and a black T-shirt that had been chopped off between her navel and her ample breasts. Crow did not think of himself as a “breast man,” but Carmen’s set drew his eyes mercilessly. The rest of her body was nicely proportionate. Not an athletic body, but she had the curves.
What turned Crow off was the slack, sleepy quality that imbued her posture, her movements, her facial expression. It was similar to the narcotic contentment of a drug addict, but deeper, more a part of her core personality. Even her skin looked sleepy. Crow had the sense that she was in a transition phase, waiting out the metamorphosis from adolescent to adult, from baby fat to cellulite, from careless innocence to jaded cynicism. Or maybe she was more like overripe fruit: sweet, soft, and loose on its stem, beginning to ferment. Some men would find that attractive. Necrophiliacs, for instance.
He tried to see her as the reincarnation of the Brownsville chicana who, thirty years ago, had cold-cocked Axel Speeter. He couldn’t see it. Where would she get the energy?
Crow was rescued from his thoughts by the sound of a slamming car door. He looked out the window. Hyatt was locking the door of his BMW, holding the silver gun in one hand. Crow took up position near the front door and waited.
Hyatt entered the apartment with the brigh
t-eyed look of a man who had just survived a traffic accident. Crow snatched the gun from his limp grasp, felt his fingers sink into loosely wrapped foil. A visible tremor ran up Hyatt’s body. He backed down the short hall into the living room, holding his hands in front of him. “Joe! Jesus! Watch where you’re pointing that thing!”
“I am. Whatever it is.” There appeared to be a shotgun beneath all the decoration. “How come you shot my car, Hy?”
“Shot … what? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Wait a second—Jesus!—that was you?”
“You telling me you shoot a car, you don’t even know who’s in it?”
“I thought you were with them!”
“With who?”
“The guys in the vette!”
“What made you think that?”
“Jesus, Joe, I don’t know. You were both on my ass. Both cars yellow?”
Crow let the gun barrel drop. “Remind me never to buy another yellow car.”
Hyatt laughed.
“It’s not funny yet, Hy.”
“I’m sorry, man. Really. Those guys were gonna hurt me. I was scared.”
“Scared of who?”
“The church.”
“What church?”
“The Amaranthines. My former partners. Polly and Rupe and their crew. You remember them, don’t you? From Ambrosia Foods? They’re out to get me, Joe. I swear to God, I thought you were with them. I didn’t know it was you.”
“You’re lucky nobody got killed.”
“It was me or them. They would’ve killed me. You saw. You’re my witness, Joe.”
“Witness? I saw you shoot at a couple of guys in a Corvette who weren’t doing anything.”
“They were following me.”
“I was following you, too.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Joe.”
Crow wasn’t sure how to take that. “Then you shouldn’t be shooting at me.”
Hyatt asked, “How come you were following me, anyway?”
Carmen said, “I remember you now. You’re a friend of Axel’s.”
“Let’s take a walk, Hy,” Crow said.
Polly floated deep in the zone, feeling Obo’s probing fingers as globes of warmth moving in and out of her body. Obo was the best. He was the one person she could count on to bring pleasure into her life on a daily basis. Obo had magic hands, zero sexuality, and absolutely nothing to say. He was the perfect masseur. She felt a little sad when he gave her spine that final flat-palmed stroke.