The Men I Sent Forward (Baer Creighton Book 6)

by Clayton Lindemuth

  Who shot Mags?

  Dunno.

  CIA? She’d talk physics to anyone and wouldn’t look down on government people, even if they confess it up front. Who the hell knows? The University?

  I bet the government’s got all sorta people in caves full of computers and particle accelerators and radio tubes. They got the geniuses with IQs like bowling scores — the good bowlers — workin’ day and night to figger how to use them quantum physics to murder men by the billion. I bet a bunch of somebodies like that don’t much care for the love approach. Maybe Mags wrote a book.

  What’d Eisenhower say when he pass the throne to Kennedy?

  Ike says, “The business of killin’ people is big business.”

  I know one damn thing. I don’t care if it’s some CIA spook or a soy-nut grad student had a crush on Mags and cut her down ’cause she told him no.

  Whoever shot Mags….

  I’m gonna cut his fuckin’ head off and when I get to the land with the corpses in the trees I’m gonna fix it to a trunk with a nine inch spike.

  Grip the wheel so tight it hurt the hand. Lookin’ that way I see the speedometer and take the foot off the gas. Last thing I need’s another entanglement with the law. When the speedometer drop to sixty-five I hold the needle steady.

  Spooks killed Mags?

  Mind’s dull. Tired.

  “Joe, listen to me. If I asked Maggie I bet she’d say her dyin’ — she’d say it don’t even matter. If what she said is true, she’s already re-lived her whole time on earth.”

  Joe’s speechless. He keep a lookout for the white motorcycle.

  I drive and stew. Dotted lines attack the hood.

  “Bullshit,” says I.

  No way in hell I let Chicago off the hook without I hunt somebody down. I cut the wheel and hit the brake. Rumble onside the road and throw up some dust. Gold coin rattle in the trunk.

  Semi trucks blast by and shake the car, six in a row. One let on the horn. Ain’t enough room ’tween the white line and the guardrail to park but I’m stopped and these kind folk’ll give me grace on the park job or else.

  No. Drive forward, this is stupid.

  Look at Joe.

  Do it.

  I put the shifter in drive and scoot next the guardrail ’til it end and I can get off the highway. Lift Glock off the seat and hold it left handed then right. Can’t bend the arm, can’t extend it neither.

  I got a solution.

  Fetch the Leatherman off my belt and flip it open to the saw. It’s the lower part of my arm that’s busted so why lock above the elbow? I saw ‘round the plaster just below the joint and soon spot blood in the white powder.

  You want to open a window before I sneeze?

  “You do it.”

  I keep sawing: Flip. Saw. Bleed. I don’t care. I chuck the Leatherman to the console and punch the last two inch of the cast ’til the plaster snaps. I rip gauze, roll the window and chuck the sawed-off ring. Now plaster only covers what’s broke. I flex the arm and my elbow pops.

  You got it about worked out?

  ’Nother truck slams by so fast the boat seems to float.

  “I feel like I gotta go back to Chicago and hunt down a couple dead men.”

  You can’t.

  “What?”

  Tat and Corazon… their situations are time sensitive.

  “You are a well spoken dog, a credit to your species. But I learned what I am. We’re goin’ back.”

  I look over the shoulder for traffic, figger I’ll cross the median ahead a bit where it don’t seem too rough. But they’s a string of cars and I got to wait. Breathe. Try and keep the hate from makin’ me punch whatever’s handy.

  Me.

  Stinky Joe paws my right arm ’til I look.

  Whatever you learned, I know it didn’t make you disloyal to the people who are still alive and need you.

  “You’re a son of a bitch, you know that?”

  You know I’m right.

  Scruff his ears and let him slop my face. He ain’t a woman but it’s love and though I’m still so coldhearted I could shit a plate of iceberg lettuce, I take Joe’s lovin’ ’til I realize sittin’ in the Eldorado next the highway ain’t the brightest thing I done this year.

  Break in the traffic, here’s my shot. I engage the turn signal and gas it to highway speed.

  I’m glad. I didn’t want to ride five hours back to Chicago.

  “Well, just so you know, we will go back to Chicago. That will happen.”

  God willing.

  “I’ll bet my life on it.”

  Your soul?

  “That’s where the life is.”

  Fillin’ up at the Sinclair gas mart, I lean on the trunk and study Mags’ face in the clouds.

  “Hey there, you from here?”

  I turn and look around the pump. Woman one over, got that sloppy blowjob look about the jaw. Eyes like pickpocket kids.

  “Lady…. Fuck —”

  Slam the door. Back on the road.

  I got a idea on the off ramp to Glenwood Springs. Circle ’round and up into town at a cool thirty five mile per hour and hold steady down the strip. Pass the Mexican food joint and a bank. A pharmacy and grocery. Another bank. Some houses and a park and the next Mexican food joint.

  Back a day ago I’d a found a new motel on account I need to lay low. But if I’m suppose to be what I am then what I am is hungry for a feller named Frankie Black Boots Lloyd to find me.

  Pull into the Lodge and park under the roof. Leave the window down for Stinky Joe and mash the fists to the eyes — ’cept the right arm don’t feel good even with the pressure it take to mash an eye. A little splash of water’d be nice but all I got is recycled Mountain Dew.

  Go in bleary.

  “Mister Boone… you’ve returned.”

  Nod. She ain’t too endeared, from her look.

  “I’m okay. Thanks for askin’.”

  She flat-smiles me.

  “I got beat to shit in your laundry room.”

  She look at me and her face is dull but they’s motion underneath like an idea comin’ up she druther keep down. Must be why her eyes is pink.

  “You saw me beat up?”

  Shakes her head and I get a zap of juice.

  “You saw. I see lies. You saw.”

  “I found you.”

  “You found me.”

  No red. No juice.

  She leans. Looks back the hall to the office.

  “Umm, I can’t talk about this. I feel bad for you but I can’t help you.”

  “Help me how?”

  “With information.”

  “What information? I know it was Frank Lloyd.”

  She nods and looks away.

  “That ain’t the information. You just said that.”

  Frown. “I can’t—”

  “I bet you will… afore we’s done.”

  She shake her head. Close her eyes. “I can’t say.” She clamps her mouth and talk through her teeth. “These people will kill me.”

  Study her long.

  “Who else? Frank Lloyd and who else?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Try and you’ll find you can.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I won’t leave.”

  Her jaws clamp and her eyes get skinny. Cheeks red. Right eye spills a tear.

  “If I tell you…”

  “Dammit.”

  “If I tell you, you are responsible for me.”

  “Ahhh fu—. Fine. You’re right. You’re exactly right. I’ll honor that. You tell me who was with Frank Lloyd and you’ll never have to fear either of ’em again.”

  “Abraham Church.”

  Chicago Mags said she thought comin’ to earth as a human being was like goin’ in a pod.

  They stick a soul in a baby and it’s like goin’ on holiday or sabbatical.

  But it seem to me this place is a prison where the Almighty sends the shitheads for a time out. Shove a kid’s nose in the corn
er. Some these people live a hundred five years, they was in big trouble in heaven and earn the longest sentence on earth.

  Maybe as souls they was right bastards.

  Then you got the babies that pass in the crib, or the stillborns and they get but a few days or even no time at all on this earth as sentence.

  Easy time, a rap on the wrist. The Almighty called ’em home so’s life in this world don’t get a chance to fuck ’em up.

  Mags works at the university where they puff each other’s brains with nonsense and it feels like a vacation, all the wants supplied.

  But most the people that ever is or was go hungry and suffer like fools.

  Nah—hell.

  This ain’t vacation.

  It’s incarceration.

  Don’t matter if a man say somethin’s right or wrong. Unjust or intolerable. Men tolerate the wrong and unjust every day.

  A man can say anything he want about rights and what he’ll tolerate.

  Only matters if he’s ready to bleed once he says it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Hello, Nat. Stinky Joe, say hello to Nat Cinder of Arizona fame and the future governor.”

  Nat hold out the hand and I shake it. He slap my back. Squeeze the shoulder like it good to see me. He’s shape shiftin’ into a politician.

  Nat say, “I want to get something out of the way so we can make the best use of our time.”

  “Get it out the way. I don’t care. Damn.”

  “Sometimes the only way to avoid a shitty outcome is to have the discretion to not participate.”

  “Well ain’t that a hell of a thing? Then why you here?”

  “I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about you. Sit this one out; I got it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You’re still contending with your leg injury. Are you seeing a doctor for that? Leg’s probably half rotted out by now if you haven’t. I saw your step as you were walking to the van. And now you’ve got a broken arm and a knot on your forehead.”

  I’ll confess the skull is more tender’n I’d expect for bone. But still…

  “Bull Shit.”

  Cinder look past me like it’s the decent thing; let me soak in misery ’til I think things his way.

  “Won’t work. I don’t give two shits if you was the Green Beret Grand Poobah or whatever the hell you call it. I call you here for help, not to turn shit over.”

  “I told her you’d say that. Fine. I won’t fight you on it. But you can be the one to tell her.”

  “Who? Ruth?”

  “Ruth? Like she’d worry about you now that she has a steady man in her life. They married last week.”

  “Ruth married? In weeks? No shit.”

  “None. No shit at all.”

  “Is he? Does he treat her right?”

  “Baer — don’t look like that. She wasn’t your woman anymore. You made sure she knew it.”

  “I said does he treat her right?”

  “No. But I have an eye on him.”

  Step back. Got a flutter in the heart and that pressure start to come in on me like when I was at the bottom of Farmer Brown’s house with the whole thing burnin’ above, and I saw how the conspiracy was founded. How Ernie Gadwal and Burley Worley team up with Stipe and his lugnuts so the whole bloodthirsty cabal was set to steal my operation or kill it, which is what they done. I oughta go back and murder ’em agin is what I oughta do, ’cause killin’ ’em the first time didn’t kill ’em enough.

  But now this situation is the same and it’s almost a daily struggle how the shit comes a-flyin’. Almost like each day’s got to provide the friction, the pain, else whoever’s along for the ride in the pod don’t get the show they pay for.

  Mags said someone bought the jackass ride. Guess I oughta raise my hand or somethin’.

  Whole situation’s too funny. Rigged. Make a man think he’s in a movie and the star of the show but he don’t get the blowjobs and drugs like the movie stars. Now the actor’s a work horse. You got the beginning, middle, end. Each scene the shit gets worse and worse and pretty soon it’s insane-funny. Cosmic funny. You see the next drop coming. You know the bad guys’ll show up on the mountain ridge and you even know the fuckin’ drum music afore you hear it. See the white guy wearin’ red paint with a plastic feather in his hair. You see the set, all the way through. The joists under how they tell a story, the studs holdin’ up each level. What makes ’em laugh — your pain — takin’ away the things you love — over and fuckin’ over — but you see it from inside-out ’cause your life is the pod car these yay-hoos take on safari. The show must go on, right? Horseshit. What next? Mae’s dead? The babies? Every show needs someone dead. Mags, yesterday, Ruth, maybe tomorrow. They got Corazon and Tat cued up.

  Men fight men ’cause they can’t fight the Almighty.

  “They fuckin’ killed Mags, Cinder. They fuckin’ killed her and no reason other’n to fuck with me. That’s it.”

  “Whoa. Easy. Who’s Mags?”

  “A woman.”

  “Wait a minute. What’s up with your eyes? You been smoking the weed?”

  “Naw, fuck that.”

  “How long’s it been since you slept?”

  “What? Why?”

  “You were out of it there, a couple minutes.”

  “Didn’t feel like I was entirely in it either.”

  “In what?”

  “What?”

  He look.

  I look.

  “How’s Mae?”

  “You’ll have to be the one to tell her you wouldn’t listen to reason. Look, Baer, I got this. I have the badge. I’m a Deputy US Marshall. I go in, cuff her to my wrist and sign a form.”

  “Which form? I’ll sign it.”

  “You can’t sign it. You’re not the Deputy.”

  He hold up the badge hangin’ by a neck lanyard.

  “Well shit, Nat. You ain’t a Deputy neither. It’s a fake badge. I’m goin’ too. Tat’s mine. She’s my responsibility — that way.”

  Nat hang his head. Well played. The whole thing kinda surreal. Sometimes I don’t know and ain’t sure.

  Which world.

  “Nat — about breakin’ out Tat and Corazon, when I was in the hospital I notice each place I walk about the floor in the blue gown everybody’s lookin’ my ass. We can use that.”

  “You didn’t tie the gown in back?”

  “They got ties?”

  “No. Baer, I said what I’m doing. If you want me to bring you along in handcuffs as a prop, I will. In fact, that’s a good idea. But I got this. And what I said a minute ago — you’re the one to tell Mae that you wouldn’t listen to reason.”

  “Whatever. We got to move.”

  “She made me promise not to let you come.”

  “Now you’re like the other fellas, promise what they can’t deliver. Quit the bullshit. This is the plan. You wear the glasses. I know the room we can swipe a white jacket so you look the doctor. You play the doctor, right?”

  Cinder shake his head. Look away.

  “Now I got the Glock — you bring me a Smith like I ask?”

  Cinder frown. Hold my eye. “You tell me straight. Your eyes are fucked up.”

  “Well shit, Cinder. Call a man out.”

  “Tell me straight. I’m not one you can play any other way.”

  “Dammit.”

  “Dammit what? Drugs?”

  “Naw, shit. Is all.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t let up.”

  “Not when I care.”

  “I was fuckin’ cryin’.”

  Shake his head. “Bullshit.” He look close. “You sure? From the look of your eyes that was a hell of a lot of crying.”

  “Fifteen hours of it. I met a woman was about to unveil the whole thing, reveal the inner workings of the universe. What with the quantum physics. And she had tits like I dunno. I never saw ’em.”

  “Sometimes those are the best.”

  “Yeah, well… N
ot very fuckin’ often.”

  “Probably not.”

  Cinder look away and I look away. Sky’s blank. So numb I can’t think. Bottled up. Beat down. So mad I don’t even know if justice is worth the trouble.

  I think I’m gonna kill for the killin’s sake.

  “Cinder, when all is said and done in Glenwood Springs, I’m goin’ to Chicago, and I’m gonna say it, and do it, agin.”

  “Yeah. Maybe you need to. But here, tonight, this is how I’m going to play it. I have a Deputy US Marshall’s badge…”

  Chicago Mags

  “There is an eternal version of you on the other side that sometimes people think of as like a lower, more primitive consciousness. This is exactly backwards. Your brain has components that handle more and more advanced bodily functions, such as the medulla, or what you might call the reptile brain. But your subconscious isn’t created in your brain, and fixing attributes to your consciousness based on a flawed theory of its design is… well… precisely incorrect.”

  “I see.”

  “In fact, the easiest way to understand it is by imagining that your subconscious mind isn’t in your brain, but is somewhere far distant and is beamed in.”

  “Somewhere distant.”

  “The other side. The other dimension. Did you grow up listening to the Doors?”

  “Ma was known to slam a door or two.”

  “The music group.”

  Head shake. “That ain’t music. Now if they’d a had a banjo — ”

  “Anyway. Okay, we’ll try it this way. You ever heard of people going on sojourns, to find themselves?”

  “Hippy bullshit. They’s right there.”

  “Baer, you’re being ornery.”

  Hornery too.

  “I’ll stop. Promise. They’s findin’ ’emselves.”

  “The point I’m making is that human beings in every culture have different ways of expressing their sense that the most important part of their identity is somehow apart from them and mostly unknown to them. Even though it is immensely important in understanding what drives their behaviors. People all over the world have felt that not only is there more to the world than they understand, but infinitely more about themselves as well.”

  “You’re a chip off the block. Günter talk like that.”