Into The Fire jb-4

by David Wiltse

  Aural slipped her hand behind her and touched his fly.

  Tommy leaned his face onto the top of her head.

  "Shit, Rev, that ain't no salami."

  "You guessed."

  "That's more like one of them cocktail sausages you eat with a toothpick."

  Aural tapped him once sharply with her knuckles and Tommy released her, jumping back.

  "You forget who you're talking to," he said, drawing himself up and trying to reclaim his dignity.

  "And you don't even know who you're talking to," Aural said. "I ain't one of them starry-eyed little things who comes up to you after a show, her little mind all whirly with the thought of sin, 'Oh, save me, Reverend Tommy, save me,' and you slip 'em salvation standing up against the back of the trailer."

  "You ain't, huh? The way I heard it, you been boasting about how you can wear a man out."

  "I told Rae that in private," she said, her face suddenly hot with betrayal.

  "And that's how she told me," he said. "In private."

  Tommy read the emotions on her face and realized he had found a weakness.

  "She oughtn't a done you like that," he continued.

  "That was a mean thing to do. You didn't deserve that."

  "I guess I'll survive it."

  "You could get right back at her, you know."

  "With you?"

  "No better revenge, honey. And I promise you, I know a whole lot more than that teenager with the funny hair.

  I can please you good and at the same time you'll be having your revenge."

  Aural smiled. For just a second it seemed almost inviting. She looked into his face, where the eyebrow rode across his forehead like a fuzzy black caterpillar. When he squinted his eyes with his seductive look, the caterpillar appeared to crawl.

  She wasn't that hard-up, Aural thought, not nearly that hard-up. But the fact that she'd even considered it indicated that she had better find herself a man, quick, while she still was calm enough to do the choosing herself. If it turned out that the man picked you, God knows what you'd end up with.

  Tommy put a hand on her cheek. His palm was already sweaty.

  "Come on, sweet thing," he said, his voice husky again. "You know you want it."

  "But what do I want?" Aural asked, still smiling sweetly.

  "Well, suppose we experiment till we get it right?"

  Tommy put his other hand on her breast and watched her eyelids quiver.

  He knew it. Some of them just had to say no first, that was all. There was nothing like persistence, it beat charm all to hell.

  She put one of her hands atop his hand that was on her breast and he felt her fingers delicately intertwining with his own. Her other hand slid down to his zipper and Tommy smiled as she pulled it slowly open.

  He liked the languid approach, nothing hurried, she knew what she was doing. He tried to knead her breast but she held that hand firmly so he just relaxed as he felt her fingers groping into his pants. If she wanted to do all the work, that was fine with him.

  Her fingers snaked into his shorts and tickled his scrotum. They slipped smoothly around his testicles and squeezed.

  Tommy moaned with pleasure.

  "Oh, yeah," he said, his eyes closed.

  She squeezed. And squeezed. And squeezed.

  "Hey." His eyes shot open to see her smiling up at him.

  Tommy tried to pull her hand away, but she held on firmly and the pain was worse. Her other hand still gripped his fingers and would not release him. He had no leverage and nothing to work with. Meanwhile, she just kept squeezing harder.

  "You're hurting me!"

  "Well, sure," she said matter-of-factly. "Funny how something can feel so nice, and then so bad, ain't it? Just too much of a good thing sometimes."

  "You're breaking my balls!"

  "You can heal them, sugar," she said. She was still smiling. That was the oddest thing to the Reverend Tommy, that she just kept smiling, not maliciously, but with the suggestion of real pleasure.

  When he thought sure he'd end up a eunuch if she didn't stop, he hit her.

  She reeled back, shaking her head from the force of the blow that had struck her on the forehead. But she released his balls. Tommy cradled his crotch with both hands, keeping an eye on Aural all the time as if he expected her to grab at him again.

  But she didn't look aggressive anymore. She didn't look particularly injured, either. What she looked more than anything was gratified. As if she had known all along that he was going to hit her, had expected it, and was glad that he had finally gotten around to it.

  The manager told him to wait a minute and Cooper moved off to one side of the counter, eyeing the customers as they got their hamburgers and chicken bits and french fries. Cooper didn't like most of them, he didn't like what he saw in their faces when they glanced at him then looked hurriedly away as if they had just seen something that polite people didn't stare at. He preferred the open gawking of the little kids, the ones too young to care about manners. They usually got their arms jerked for looking at him too long, and sometimes their parents would kneel down beside them and explain things in urgent but instructive tones. Cooper wanted to squash those parents, wanted to step on them right where they knelt and jump up and down.

  The manager was a shifty-eyed bastard himself. Cooper had told him he wanted a job and was not afraid of hard work, just the way he had been coached in the class on readjustment to society that they gave in Springville. He had been polite, said please, called the man sir even though he was a scrawny bastard that Cooper could have snapped into pieces with one hand. He had been told to wait and he was waiting but that didn't mean he wasn't aware of what the manager was up to. Cooper saw him say something to one of the employees in the back of the kitchen, saw the employee laugh. How some pimple-faced kid wearing a paper hat thought he could afford to laugh at Cooper was a mystery the big man would like to solve by squeezing pimple-face's head until it popped open.

  After making Cooper stand there long enough to show that he was the boss, the manager returned with an application form.

  "Just fill this out," the manager said, offering Cooper a pen.

  Cooper stared blankly at the paper.

  "It's just a formality," the man said. "We can always use someone who's willing to work."

  "I'm willing to work," Cooper said. He held the paper back to the man as if the transaction had been completed.:'You still have to fill it out," the manager said.

  'I can do dishes," Cooper said.

  "Good."

  Cooper looked into the open kitchen, seeking the dishwasher or the sink.

  "We use mostly disposable dinnerware here," the manager said.

  Cooper wondered what he was talking about: dinnerware. Cooper knew how to do dishes, he had been trained to do that in Huntsville, he knew how to work the machines.

  "Why don't you just fill it out and return it to me when you're finished. No hurry, take your time."

  The manager walked away and Cooper sat at one of the plastic tables, his big legs folding uncomfortably under the surface. He saw the place to put his name and printed it there in block letters. A few more of the questions were easy enough, but some of the rest of them confused him.

  They had taught him at Springville how to fill out a form like this but he had forgotten some of it.

  He wished that his punk were there. The punk could read like nobody's business.

  A male employee swabbed at the table in front of Cooper's with a sponge.

  Cooper wrinkled his nose at the scent of the astringent cleanser. He growled menacingly; it was hard enough to concentrate without somebody sticking ammonia in his nose. Cooper glowered at the employee. The man heard the sound and turned to look.

  He had the big eyes and swollen head of Down's Syndrome, and his face was wreathed with a beatific smile.

  "Hi," the man said sweetly.

  Startled by the sweetness, Cooper said "hi" in return, then studied the application form again
. A fucking retard could get a job here, Cooper thought. Did they have to fill out a form, too? They couldn't keep him from having a job now, there was no way they could deny him, he could work rings around that guy.

  He glanced at the worker again and the man was still smiling, his eyes so happy he looked as if he and Cooper were long-lost friends. I don't know you, Cooper thought.

  Don't look at me like you know me, I'll bust your fat head wide open for you.

  The employee worked his way across the room, blissfully.inaware of the malice in Cooper's darting looks.

  Cooper glanced around for the manager, wondering if the man was aware of the caliber of his employees. Maybe Cooper would have to point it out to him if the manager gave him any static about this bullshit application.

  Cooper knew how to work in a kitchen, goddamn it! He wasn't just some table swabber, he had worked in a kitchen that served over a thousand men three meals a day. He could do the work if they'd just let him!

  His eyes began to burn and the application swam before him, taunting him with stupid-ass clerk questions and words as tangled as knots. I ain't no goddamned dummy, he thought. Give me a test, something to see can I do the work, not an application for a job. He started to crumple the form in frustration, then stopped, the readjustment counselor's words droning over and over in his ears. "Just remember, none of it is directed at you personally, it's just the way society works. Be patient, take a deep breath, try again. Keep trying. Keep trying."

  The readjustment counselor had been a woman with silver hair and a big mole right beside her upper lip.

  Sometimes she had reminded Cooper of his mother.

  Sometimes he had wanted her to come to his cell and keep explaining things, everything and everything until he understood. Sometimes he thought he might like to kill her.

  He wished she were here now to see the kind of shit they tried to make him do in the world. He wished the punk were here so he could help him with the form. The punk had said to call him if he ever needed help.

  Cooper thought of doing it now, but then he would have to read the words on the form into the phone and he didn't like the phone in the first place…

  Now the form was wrinkled. He thought of asking for a new one so that the manager wouldn't think he didn't take care of things-and maybe a new one would be easier to read, maybe he had been given the wrong one in the first place-but he didn't want the manager to think he was irresponsible… he could say the retard had messed up the paper when he was wiping the tables. He could show the manager how it had happened and in the process he could demonstrate how well he could clean a table himself and then the form wouldn't be necessary at all, and if the retard tried to deny that he had messed up the form, Cooper would mess him up in a way he'd never forget.

  He smoothed the paper as best he could, looking around to see if the reetard was watching him, possibly anticipating his ploy. He noticed the girl looking at him, her face lowered to suck milk shake from a straw, — her eyes peering out from under her brows. When he returned her look, daring her to keep staring, she smiled and didn't turn away the way everyone else did. What the hell was her problem? If she didn't stop gawking at him, he would be her problem pretty damned fast.

  The bitch stood up and crossed towards him, still sucking on the straw.

  She looked about eighteen, old enough to be legal, anyway, and not bad looking but if she didn't stop staring at him, he'd gouge her eyes out.

  "How ya doing'?" she asked, releasing the straw at last.

  A drop of chocolate shake rode her lower lip. She thrust out the tip of her tongue and licked it away.

  "What?" Cooper thought she was referring to the application and he smoothed it again.

  "Said 'hi,' " she said. "Forget your glasses?"

  "What?"

  "I see you're having a little trouble with the form there, I figured you forgot your glasses. Want me to read it to You?"

  Before Cooper could figure out what the trick was, she had slipped into the booth opposite him and swiveled the paper to face her.

  "It's wrinkled..

  "I don't imagine that matters," the girl said. " 'They just want the facts, ma'am."

  " She grinned as if she had made a joke and Cooper squinted at her, trying to figure out what she was up to.

  "Well, now," she continued, "let's see what they want from you. Name; well, you got that one right. Hello, Darnell Cooper. Are you really thirty-three? You don't look it, you look much younger."

  "What are you studying me for?" Cooper asked.

  "You're what they call well-preserved, I guess," she said. There was a smile in her voice even when she wasn't smiling. "Now here where it says previous employment… have you ever worked before?"

  "Sure."

  "… Want to tell me where?"

  "The kitchen."

  "Well, now, Coop, I think they want more information than that."

  Cooper was confused by the use-of his nickname. "You don't know me," he said, almost certain it was true.

  "Have you forgotten so soon?" she asked, then laughed. "No, I don't know you, and I'd remember somebody like you, believe me. God, you look strong."

  "I'm stronger than just about anybody," Cooper said.

  "I believe it. Where'd you get that tattoo?"

  "Somewhere."

  "I like tattoos."

  "Uh-huh."

  "I have one, you know."

  Cooper was silent. How was he supposed to know that?

  "But it's in a place I can't show you until I know you better." She laughed at herself again. "They tell me I'm shameless. Do you think I'm shameless?"

  "I don't think about you at all," Cooper said.

  "We'll have to get you over that… you're not one of them, are you?"

  She flopped her wrist at him.

  Cooper stared at her. He could see part of her cleavage.

  She had it showing like that so he could reach his hand in there, he knew that. That's why women dressed the way they did, to make it easier for you.

  "You're not an old fag, are you? There's an awful lot of that going around these days, and it's always the best-looking ones. Why is that? … They say a lot of body builders are like that… Just my luck…

  It's not that I have anything against it, it just seems like such a waste, that's all… Are you?"

  "What?"

  "They say Stallone is, but I don't believe it. Are you?"

  "What?"

  "A fag."

  Was she asking if he was a faggot? Cooper could not believe it.

  "I killed one once," he said, immediately regretting it.

  But she didn't seem to mind.

  "Well, you look like you could, easy enough."

  "I could. I did.",

  "I'll bet you did… Are you as strong everywhere as you are with them arms?" She looked like she was blushing all of a sudden, but Cooper couldn't imagine she had suddenly turned shy.

  "Yeah," said Cooper.

  "Tell you what, why don't I fill this thing out for you… you know, since you lost your glasses. And then you could take me out for a milk shake."

  "You just had a milk shake."

  She grinned. "You don't miss a trick, do you? Maybe we could find me another one. I'm insatiable."

  She put her hand atop his for a moment, still grinning like they were sharing a joke. Cooper grinned back at her and looked at her cleavage.

  She took the pen from his fingers.

  When she bent over the tabletop to do the form, she showed even more of her breasts.

  I could kill you so fast you wouldn't believe it, he thought. I could kill you just like that. Then he remembered the girls in the coal mine.

  Or I could kill you real slow. I could take forever.

  She seemed to know he was thinking about her because she looked up at him and smiled again.

  "I'm fudging things just a little bit," she said. "When I'm finished they'll put you in charge of the place…

  'Cause we want to
keep a great big hunk like you around town, don't we?"

  "Have you ever been in a coal mine?" Cooper asked.

  "Darling," she said, "I'll try anything once."

  The third letter was different. It didn't exist.

  The envelope was the same, addressed to Becker in care of the FBI, and the postmark was still Decatur, Alabama, but Becker opened it to find nothing inside. No letter, no message written in the envelope itself, nothing, not so much as lint.

  Had his correspondent simply forgotten to put the clipping from The Times into the envelope? Or was he under sudden pressure and unable to do so for reasons of his own safety? Or had someone taken it out? If the correspondent was dependent on someone else posting his mail, as Becker suspected, then it was possible the man had been caught. And if he had been caught, what had become of him?

  Becker held the envelope to the light to see if it was the medium for the message itself. There was no imprint of something having been written without ink. There were no holes in the envelope.

  Feeling foolish, Becker lit a match and held the envelope over it to bring out any invisible ink. There was none.

  Searching through Jack's room, he came up with a magnifying glass and perused the envelope inside and out.

  Again, nothing that he could find. There were vastly more sophisticated ways to hide a message, and to discover it, but Becker was certain his correspondent did not expect him to take the stationery to the FBI lab.

  Both messages had been sent to him, not the Bureau. Whatever message there was-, the correspondent expected Becker to find it by himself, and that meant without elaborate scientific help.

  And the longer he thought of it, the more convinced Becker became that there was a message there somewhere. If, as he had first suspected, someone had intercepted the message, why mail just the envelope? Why alert the recipient that something had gone wrong? Especially when the recipient of the letter was someone in the FBI? Much safer, and much more likely, that whoever removed the message would have withheld the envelope as well.

  Therefore, the message was in the envelope, on the envelope, or the envelope itself and not impossible to decipher because the writer expected Becker to do it.