Cul-de-Sac

by David Martin

  “That summer we spent together you kept your guns locked in the trunk.”

  “I was afraid you’d shoot me.”

  “I might’ve.” She tugged on the revolver’s grips. “Let’s see it.”

  Camel dried his hands and brought out the .357 magnum revolver but wouldn’t let Annie hold it.

  She asked him if his work was dangerous.

  “No.”

  “Then why—”

  “I’ve been armed my entire adult life, I wouldn’t feel right without them.”

  “Them?”

  From an ankle holster he brought out a five-shot .38 special revolver, from the pocket of his sports coat he produced a five-shot .22 magnum revolver … laid all three of them on the counter like evidence of a crime.

  “Jesus Teddy.”

  “I know. It’s … strange. When I’m cleaning one pistol, I always keep another nearby, loaded and ready. This little twenty-two magnum? In the shower I put it in a sandwich bag and keep it on the soap dish.”

  “What in the world are you armed against?”

  “I don’t ask that question anymore, I stay armed on faith.”

  “Scary.”

  He agreed it was. “You take lemon with your tea right?”

  “You remember.”

  He remembered from their summer together that Annie put a wedge of lemon in everything she drank … the gin, the soda, the water, the tea, even the coffee they brewed at three A.M. so they could stay up to see sunrise over seawater and then drink beer on the beach, Annie pushing a wedge of lemon down the beer bottle’s long neck.

  He remembered Annie naked and in bed, the sheets twisted on her legs, sheets that stayed damp with sweat and humidity, Annie did too … her small breasts topped with swollen red nipples, her white freckled skin betraying with purple bruised accusations everywhere he had squeezed too tightly, sucked too hard. He remembered that everything of her also tasted of him. Camel would haul himself from bed and drink a quart of water straight down, dehydrated from loss of sweat and spit and semen.

  “If you don’t have lemon …” she said as he continued standing there, staring off.

  “Bought a nice one yesterday.”

  Camel found the lemon and placed it on a cutting board admiring its yellow perfection, at the end opposite the stem stuck out a nipple almost exactly the size and hardness of Annie’s as he remembered them. Camel took knife in hand, anticipating the smell. The lemon did not disappoint: summer childhood lemonade memories came with the juice that ran out over his fingertips and onto the cutting board. The high sharp odor of lemon soaked sinus deep and made his jaw hinge pucker, made him salivate.

  He looked at Annie. “All the shit I’ve been through, I brought it on myself. Divorce, keeping people at arm’s length, getting kicked off the force, not being there for you when you needed me, general hard-ass alienation … I read a phrase once that described it perfectly: tragedy without drama.”

  She stayed close to him. “You probably realize now what a mistake you made turning me down … in fact you’re going to ask me to leave Paul and marry you, aren’t you?”

  He waited a beat then said, “Yeah, why don’t you leave your husband and marry me?”

  “No … I can’t.”

  Camel squinted and turned back to the counter to cut another wedge of lemon. “Fair enough.” Raising lemon-wet fingers to his mouth, he anticipated sourness before tasting it.

  “Me too,” Annie begged, offering her open mouth.

  When he put those fingers to her tongue, she shuddered.

  19

  Either it was the cocaine and pills or Growler really was clinically paranoid, absolutely convinced that a conspiracy had not only framed him for Hope’s murder seven years ago but was also manipulating him now that he was out of prison. How else to explain Kenny Norton’s address? Growler had left Cul-De-Sac to score some additional pharmaceuticals, came back to find a sheet of paper taped to the door: Norton’s address. Too excited to bother checking on St. Paul, Growler got back into the rental car and started driving. But he’d been away from the area a long time and got lost, couldn’t find the address and began suspecting it was bogus, became convinced again he was being manipulated, anonymously given this address just to set him off on a wild goose chase … but why, he never knew why.

  Just after eight P.M. Growler stopped at a convenience store to get directions. When he stepped up to the elevated checkout counter a pimply clerk pointed him to the back of the line.

  Growler asked his question anyway, “How do you get to Lee Street?”

  The clerk was already turning away, ringing up a quart of skim milk for some old fart fumbling for exact change.

  Growler burned a dead-eyed stare at the clerk, a white kid with a big nose and a large gulping Adam’s apple … one of those perpetual adolescents who could’ve been seventeen or twenty-seven, long hair and a face full of scabby old pimples fighting for space with a fresh crop of juicy red ones, the kind of kid you’d suspect as a chronic nose-picker.

  “Where’s Lee Street?” Growler asked again.

  Ignoring him the clerk raised a set of bored brown eyes to the next person in line, a working mom holding an oversized package of disposable diapers in her right hand, balancing a crying baby on her left hip.

  Growler tried hard to keep his anger tamped down, safely coiled … but working just as hard against this good intention was the cocaine he’d snuffled on the way here, twisting knots in his paranoia, putting a flame to the same rage that led him to kill the Raineys. Growler couldn’t keep his hands from jangling, like he was trying to shake them dry. The mom sat her brat and the diapers up on the counter, went searching in her purse for money.

  Growler losing it. Ever since Lawrence Rainey said he’d found Hope’s photographs, Growler had been thinking of little else … the photographs and the elephant. And of course how everyone was always betraying him, telling lies, son-of-a-bitch anyway, dirty bastard liars … mumbling all this under his breath.

  No other customers in the store now, the mom had left in a hurry, Growler barely able to control his voice as he demanded to the clerk, “Where’s Lee Street?”

  “We sell maps, down there to your left,” the kid said, indicating a rack in front of the counter.

  “You don’t know where Lee Street is?”

  “Maps down there to your left,” the clerk repeated, avoiding eye contact like a practiced bureaucrat.

  Growler sweating in his leather jacket, feeling the red flannel shirt he wore turning wet under the arms … trying his best to hold on to his composure long enough to get out of here without killing the pimple king up there on his elevated platform. “I understand you sell maps but I remember Lee Street being right around here—”

  “Maps down there to your left.”

  Growler started to raise his voice but then smiled showing those oversized teeth. He used to be vain about his good looks, Hope said he was sleek like an otter and Growler had taken great pride in that assessment, but young and handsome were the qualities that got him so heartily fucked in prison, Growler then wishing he was old and fat and repellantly ugly … having these horse teeth installed was a step in that direction.

  Blinking in genuine surprise at those big choppers the clerk was thinking what a laugh his buddies would get when he told them about this guy.

  Finding the rack of maps, Growler grabbed one then came around to the swinging door that gave access to the platform behind the counter.

  “Customers not allowed back here,” the clerk said, apathy in his voice replaced by a suddenly sharpened anxiety.

  Growler kept coming, swinging his left hand up to cup the young man’s groin, squeezing his balls … the clerk yelling out, “Next block take a left, Lee Street’s two blocks over!”

  “Could’ve told me that when I came in,” Growler said, releasing his grip and tossing the map to the kid. “Now stick that up your ass.”

  The kid nodded as if saying okay you made your poi
nt.

  But Growler repeated the command. “Stick it up your ass.”

  The clerk turning to the phone, telling Growler, “Welcome to nine-one-one, asshole.”

  He jerked the receiver away and kicked the kid in the left knee, Growler wearing heavy work boots with steel toes, hurting the young man enough that he fell to the floor cursing … Growler kicked him again, in the ribs. “Drop your pants and stick that map up your ass.”

  The clerk tried to scoot away, Growler stepping on his leg. “Either I see that map disappear up your ass or I break your fucking neck … now take off your pants and do it!”

  For the first time since starting to work here the young man actually prayed for customers but none came into the store so he stayed on the floor hoping this crazy fuck would just get bored and leave, surely he wasn’t serious about the map …

  Growler put a leg back to kick the kid in the head, then caught himself … what am I doing, going to get sent back to prison before I ever see Kenny or Elizabeth … Jesus Christ get a grip he told himself, reaching down and picking up the map. “I’ll take this, how much is it?”

  The clerk gawked in disbelief.

  “How much!”

  “You can have it mister.”

  “No I want to pay for it.”

  “A dollar?”

  Growler dropped the bill on the floor next to the clerk. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” First time he’d ever said that to a customer.

  “I wouldn’t call the cops if I were you.”

  “No sir.”

  Although Growler’s nerves felt like they were juicing 220 he made a point of strolling unhurriedly from the store.

  “Hello Ken.”

  “Donald.”

  A moment’s pause between the two men as Ken Norton tried to compute the magnitude of the nightmare arriving here at his apartment, Donald Growler standing there drinking in his old friend’s abject horror.

  Too late Norton tried to close the door on Growler who, prepared for this maneuver, had jammed his boot in place and now pushed back with his shoulder. After a three-second struggling stalemate Growler forced his way into Norton’s apartment and slammed the door behind him.

  Norton was already running for the telephone, Growler pacing right behind him. Before Norton could lift the receiver to his ear, Growler slapped that ear with his open hand, slapped it hard enough to injure Norton’s eardrum … proof of which came in the form of a straw-thick trickle of viscous blood.

  Norton pressed both hands to his damaged ear, Growler kicked him in the shin and hung up the phone.

  Ken Norton was on the floor now, Growler kicking him randomly though not hard enough to rupture internal organs or break bones, not yet … Norton begging for him to stop.

  Growler did. “Why’d you lie about me at the trial?”

  “The cops told me to!”

  “Bullshit.”

  “No they did.”

  “They were that desperate to make their case?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You going to tell me the cops stole our elephant too?”

  “I thought you hid it.”

  “It’s not there.”

  “Donny—”

  “Don’t call me that. Remember I told you what I was going to do to you if I ever got out of prison.”

  Norton remembered.

  Growler paused, trying to balance a need for information against seven years of rage … don’t kill him yet, don’t kill him yet. He took a deep breath and modulated his voice. “Smells nice in here.”

  Norton had been burning fragrant candles.

  “Done real well for yourself,” Growler said, looking around. “Financed it all with the elephant, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Did you get the full three million for it?”

  “I never saw the elephant after you made the switch—”

  “Liar.”

  “I swear to you—”

  “Turn over.”

  “Don, please—”

  “Turn around goddamn it.”

  Norton did. He’d answered the door wearing only a blue velour robe that tied loosely in front with a sash and hung down to just above his knees … now that he was on the floor facing away from Growler, the robe having ridden up to his waist, Norton’s bare ass was exposed to Growler who took his time aiming the steel toe of his right boot, driving it hard into Kenny who grunted like an ox being poleaxed.

  “Feel like you’re going to shit?” Growler asked standing over him.

  “I think … Don, I think you really hurt something down there.”

  “You call that hurt? Ever pull a train, Kenny?”

  When Growler resumed the kicking, Norton began crabbing across the carpet into a corner of the living room. Friends told him he was crazy for putting in a white carpet but he kept his apartment the way he kept himself, neat and clean, and the white carpet had never been stained. It set off the flowered sofa just as the pristinely white walls set off the various paintings that Norton had done, each ornately framed, each lit by a small lamp affixed to the bottom frame. Also distributed around the apartment were pieces of Norton’s sculpture, most of it representational wildlife, wolves and bears, but some free-form pieces too. Like the paintings, the sculptures were discreetly lighted. He’d been selling some pieces in Washington stores, a few galleries were interested. Kenny’s life had been good these past few years and he loved this new apartment, though he wished now he’d made more of an effort to befriend neighbors … if he started screaming would they come to his rescue before Growler kicked him to death?

  Norton held up his hands and feet to ward off the heavy boot, Growler content to kick whatever came within range … a wrist, the bottom of a foot, an elbow, calf. He was sweating again and his black slicked-back hair had become wildly dislodged to hang over his ears in a way that made him look particularly thuggish.

  “I asked you if you ever pulled a train.” Growler spoke without interrupting his kicking spree.

  “Oh God, stop … Jesus God please …”

  To give his right leg a rest Growler switched to the left.

  In spite of all this abuse Norton hadn’t yet ruined the white carpet, his blood vessels were rupturing internally to spill out into surrounding tissue, forming bruises.

  Thirty-nine years old, he frequently introduced himself by saying, “I’m Ken Norton … but not the boxer.” It often got a laugh because this Ken Norton was skinny and white and decidedly unathletic, so gentle in appearance and disposition that you got the impression he might faint away if you startled him by clapping your hands too loudly. He had gentle Bambi brown eyes, his long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, he wore one looped earring the size of a penny.

  Growler stopped kicking and asked again, “You ever pull a train, Kenny?”

  “What I did to you was unforgivable Donny—”

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” Growler muttered as he kicked again and again. Norton turned his face to the wall, receiving the boot to his back, his kidneys.

  “Seven years I pulled that fucking train,” Growler continued muttering as he kicked. He wanted to make his old friend understand the full measure of hell that Growler had suffered, tell the whole story from the very beginning when five men jerked his pants down and bent him over a rolled-up mattress and held his arms and legs as they took turns …

  “I wanted to die, I wanted to die,” Growler kept saying as he kept kicking, leaning both hands against the wall to brace himself for better leverage. Growler stomped straight down on arms and legs, wherever the boot landed on bare skin it left angry tread signatures … Growler in the grips of so powerful a wrath that although the horror of the last seven years ran as a narrative in his mind, what came out of his mouth were only phrases spat and growled.

  “… holds me on his lap and hugs me and tells me …” Growler still stomping Norton who had started screaming like a woman.

  “… then another half-dozen line up a
nd I have to pull that train too …”

  Norton squirming around trying to stand.

  “… in the hospital with cotton wadding stuffed up my ass …”

  Norton screaming, “HELP! HELP!”

  “… my ass sold for cigarettes, sent like a goddamn delivery boy to give blow jobs … shut the fuck up Kenny!”

  But Norton wouldn’t shut up, Growler kicking him in the legs to keep him on the floor.

  Norton pleading, “I’m sorry, oh God I’m sorry!”

  Growler took a rest. “You’re not sorry—”

  “I am.”

  “Who was in on it with you?”

  “In on what?”

  “Framing me! You and the Raineys, Uncle Penny and Elizabeth—Where does she live now? You got her address?”

  “Yes but she didn’t—”

  Growler kicked him. “Where’s the elephant, where’s Hope’s pictures, why’d you lie about me!”

  Norton wept pitifully.

  “Larry Rainey told me he’d seen those pictures Hope took, I know they exist goddamn it.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry Donny—”

  Growler kicked him in the mouth.

  “I had my teeth knocked out too,” Growler said, resting again. “Filthy fucking guy didn’t like the blow job, hit my front teeth with a pipe … see the new ones I had put in?” Growler grimaced to show off his unnaturally large teeth but Norton, over on hands and knees trying to throw up, didn’t look. “Cost me a fucking fortune … and every pack of cigarettes I paid, every dollar of scrip … earned with my ass … good strong teeth, they’re screwed right into the bone.”

  Norton spat stuff from his mouth. When he saw all that red-white-pink shit on the precious white carpet his instinct was to clean it but wiping at the mess with his hand succeeded only in spreading it around.

  “Thought these fucking monster teeth might discourage attention but of course it didn’t work, first time back on the block …” Which triggered some memory, Growler clenching those teeth, screaming through them: “WHY DID YOU LIE ABOUT ME!” He kicked Norton in the side of the head, squarely on the temple, causing him to make an oafish sound then slide forward into the wall and collapse over on his side.