Bad to the Bones

by Layla Wolfe

  Ziggy made a skeptical sound. “Isn’t that guy a nethead? You sure you trust him? Doesn’t he work for the Presencións?”

  “He does. But his main interest is seeing them go down. Ah. Sounds like them.”

  The bike, followed by the cage, appeared at the top of the rise on the Bihari side of the gate. To Knoxie’s surprise, it was the girl who rode the Sporty. She wore no brain bucket, probably unable to find Bellamy’s. Virginia had that pale, almost transparent skin of her sister, and the eyes lined like an Egyptian hieroglyph. Her hair was wild, long, loose. She waved at them, having cut her engine. She now coasted down past the guard house as though she rode an electric scoot, Rafael in some kind of quiet Prius following.

  Almost wordlessly, Ziggy took over from Virginia while Knoxie pumped her for intel. Ziggy was walking the bike up the hill behind them before Knoxie could say,

  “How are you, Virginia? Are you safe since they kicked Bellamy out?”

  “We have to get back now,” Rafael was already saying, halfway in and halfway out of his cage, waving.

  “Espera. Virginia, are you okay? Bellamy told me you’re pregnant. It’s all right. Here. We got you a burner phone so you can talk to Bellamy. Don’t let anyone see it.”

  “Put it in your brassiere,” said Rafael.

  The girl did so. “I’m all right. They make me shovel shit instead of serve food, and they’ve moved me out of Wang Cho House and into some kind of dormitory with a bunch of other women who do menial jobs. I know they’ll take the baby away. At least this way I won’t get penetrated by The Blessed One anymore. I know it’s wrong to say it, but I just don’t like it!”

  “Yeah,” Knoxie spat with anger, “and see where it got you. I should’ve brought you a carton of rubbers too. Listen, we’re going to get you out of here. Just not today. We need to strategize. These fucktards are going down, I promise you that. Just hang tight. Get into Rafael’s car.”

  Rafael was already securely back in his driver’s seat. The distant buzz of Ziggy starting the Sporty’s engine came from a couple of hills away, and relief coursed through Knoxie. They were home free. He just needed some intel from Rafael.

  Rafael said, “I’ll text you coordinates to Riker’s trap house in Nogales. I have to tell you, Knoxie. I’m just a courier with a US passport. I was born in Nogales. The Presencións are holding my sister hostage in Sonora as insurance if I try to run. They sent me her little finger as proof.”

  Knoxie frowned. He wasn’t sure he’d just heard right. “What? They sent you her finger?”

  “Si, su dedo meñique. They cut it off and wrapped it and left it on my doorstep in Nogales.”

  “Jesus Roosevelt Christ.”

  “What?”

  “You get back in there now. You’re helping us immensely, Rafael. Don’t worry. We’ll get this all sorted out. And thanks for the puta in the guard’s shed. Oh, one more thing. Keep a lookout for anything that looks like a laboratory, like they’re testing some kind of virus. Grab any test tubes you might see, vials, any slides, any drugs.”

  Rafael smiled at that, showing his gold teeth. Knoxie didn’t know how he could smile, having just told him what he did about his sister. “There are some good perras inside that manicomio. Listen. They want me to go back and get some more A-1 soon, so I keep pretending to be excited about their religion so I can stay.”

  Knoxie banged twice on the car’s roof, the universal sign for “you’re good to go.”

  Rafael turned and drove silently back up the hill. Knoxie felt no tension, no fearful presence, nothing ominous about to happen. It was a clear November day in the high desert and he would have been feeling pretty good about his Nogales mission if it weren’t for what his wife—ex-wife—Nicole had just told him.

  His sixteen-year-old son Cameron had just been busted at his Flagstaff school holding what sounded like a few dime’s worth of heroin. Worse, though, it was cheese heroin, the sort he’d been fighting against the past week. Knoxie hadn’t had time to attempt to call the boy and yell at him, so that was weighing heavily on his mind.

  Other than that, though, Knoxie felt good about the Nogales job. The sun was setting behind a cloudless bluff, so crisp and still it seemed encased in glass, like a museum display case. He could ride all night for about five hours, get some crap motel, then go find Riker’s shitty trap house. He could pay some stupid cluck, some fucking hopeless fiend, to go score and comeback with intel whether there were women or babies there, how stocked they seemed to be on hardware. He couldn’t risk being recognized by Riker, but he could watch with field glasses from a safe distance.

  Knoxie was just walking his ride back up the hill when what sounded like a shot rang out behind him.

  He froze. He figured he wasn’t shot. After a brief pause, he couldn’t resist the intuition to turn around, see what had made the sound.

  The daimyo stood at the guard shack’s door, his AR-15 assault rifle aimed at the sky. He’d shot at the sky? Gripping his bike with one hand, Knoxie whipped his Glock from where it was wedged in the small of his back and pointed the barrel at the guard.

  But what sort of standoff was this? At sixty yards he wasn’t certain he could bury the guy. But the guy would definitely hit him once he leaped on his bike and started the engine.

  “What do you want?” Knoxie bellowed.

  “I’m asking you that! What’s the big idea? Why are you sneaking away?” Meanwhile, the daimyo had his radio to his ear, no doubt reporting Knoxie’s presence.

  “I came to visit someone. Saw the windows of the hut all steamed up, didn’t want to bother you.” A likely story.

  “Then why are you pointing that gun at me?” shouted the daimyo. Knoxie thought he heard him say excitedly into the radio, “Code orchid at the east gate! The eggplant has landed! Need Big Fandango down here pronto.”

  What the fuck? Knoxie knew then the daimyo was calling on Shakti to fly low down there and…well, Knoxie didn’t want to wait to find out. In a flash, he was in his saddle, hitting the fuel switch. He had to use his Glock hand to hold onto the ape hanger grip, so the piece was useless for a few seconds. He’d just turned the key on when he was hit in the calf.

  That bullet wasn’t coming from the guard shack.

  He was pushing the engine button when the second bullet whizzed by. His motor sprang to life, but he only managed to ride a few feet before he was hit again in the shoulder.

  He laid the bike down, thanking god for his leathers. He parked it horizontally almost in slow motion. The big machine came down on the injured leg before it spun off onto the gravel, and Knoxie knew he was doomed. He was sprawled on his back—all he could see was the bowl of purple-blue sky above.

  Distant shouts came closer, and he had the presence of mind to stick his Glock into his boot before he tried to sit up.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  KNOXIE

  “Express yourself, my dove. Express the air from your lungs.”

  That was kind of hard to fucking do, given the position Knoxie was in. The daimyo—Bulsara, Knoxie figured his name was—had tied some slinky white nylon rope around Knoxie’s wrists and tossed the ends over a convenient pulley attached to the overhead rafter of the guard shack. This was after removing Knoxie’s gloves, his shirt, his cut. He figured they wanted to emasculate him, to cut him down a peg, because without his cut, he was no one. But how did they know that? Maybe they felt the same way about their stupid purple rags.

  Although the blood from the gunshot wound in his calf was starting to sting, Knoxie said nothing. The boot leg of his jeans was halfway shot away, but no one seemed to care or notice. The second bullet seemed to have grazed the bicep. He was allowed to dangle halfway sitting in a chair, but already his arms were wrenched in agony. He had too much pride to ask to be lowered a bit.

  Shakti had come right away. The one-eyed bastard in the Ed Wood cashmere sweater had turned a chair around backward to straddle, as though they had come up together and would discuss their childh
oods. Knoxie thought of what Rafael had told him about his sister’s finger before he’d driven back into the compound. But that was the cartel. Surely these doomsday preppers didn’t need to be that cruel. What threat did he represent, anyway?

  Knoxie tried to remember what he’d yelled the last time he’d been up here. Something like, “you’re in our sights, you sick swami!” Something like that. “We’re taking you down!” “You’d better look behind you when you walk!” Oh, and then he’d written a love note on the Stuart Grillo daily log. It sure was easy to make such childish, brash threats when you were pretty certain the twatwaffle with the AK wasn’t about to shoot you.

  He knew better now.

  He tried to still his emotions, to rein them in, prevent them from running away like a herd of wild horses. It’d been a long time since he’d had to call on his rusty SEAL training. From what little he’d heard of these people and their broken bones, smothering, and raping, it would be wrong to feel anything near secure. And now the weirdo was talking.

  “I know of your predicament, my dove.” The swami spoke in what was supposed to be a soothing tone just dripping with hypocritical sap. He brandished a snowy crystal wand, blunt at its tapered tip. He waved it as though sprinkling fairy dust. “I know what happened to you as a youth. I can see you wearing the vestments with the angelic white wing arms. What a glorious boy you must have been.”

  What the fuck? Knoxie’s heart nearly stopped. Then he calmed himself. He’s just guessing. He doesn’t know a thing about me.

  “See, the thing is, Mr. Hammett…I can see where you would want to take Asanga from me. The two of you complement each other. As a rough and tough biker, you fear and humiliate women.”

  What in the name of an extraterrestrial thetan? Knoxie finally spoke, letting all his pent-up scorn drip from his words. “Rough and tough biker? I can see you get your stereotypes from watching Sesame Street. As for ‘taking’ Bellamy from you, you were the one who tossed her out with the used diapers and the rest of the alkies you bussed in to vote for your candidate. I hardly had to do any ‘taking,’ you asswipe. She voluntarily came with me.”

  Shakti pointed at the ceiling with the wand. “That’s where you are wrong. Asanga is easily duped, easily manipulated thanks to the trauma of her father leaving when she was young. I can see how the two of you suit each other, what with your complementary trauma at the hands of those priests who pretended to be so holy. They were supposed to be an example for youth, a symbol of all that is holy for idealistic kids. Instead they revealed their true colors, the truly dark, rotten pit of their souls.”

  Knoxie gulped, his throat dry. Even Bellamy didn’t know about that chapter in his life. “I have no idea what you’re fucking talking about, you half-assed preacher. I think you caught the wrong rough and tough biker. Maybe you were expecting a cat named Riker. He’s known for doing twisted things with religious artifacts. As for Asanga being easily duped—you’re right about that. How else could she have lived with you for so long?”

  Knoxie was right. Mentioning the name Riker had some effect on the swami’s one good eye. It tightened, flickering like a steely flint. But he continued on, droning his sermon. “I know who you are, Mr. Hammett. You own The Missing Ink on Bargain Boulevard in town. You were an altar boy in Hondo, Texas. And those perverted bible thumpers took an unnatural interest in a delightful, well-proportioned boy like you.”

  What the fuck? Knoxie was thoroughly confused. Not only was his calf stinging like a motherfucker, but a dark pool of blood was oozing from his boot down the wooden floorboards. He changed the subject away from something he didn’t understand anyway. “Listen, Yogi Fuckwad. My club’s going to know something’s up because I haven’t checked in. I was supposed to call them at five o’clock,” he lied. It was a feeble gambit worth a shot.

  Shakti flicked his wrist as though conducting an orchestra. “No, no, no. You have important work to do here, Mr. Hammett. If I’m going to allow Asanga to remain in your presence, I need to know that your chis are evenly balanced. You like to humiliate women. You need alignment. I watched some of those erotic films you’ve made. Not bad, from a technical viewpoint. But the scenes where you tie up women and make them beg you for punishment? My, my. What ironic work coming from a man who had his penis sucked by a priest.”

  Knoxie raged. Anger overcame him, blinding him. He bucked and snorted against his bonds. Gnashing his teeth, he snorted hot breaths against his face, his eyeballs bulging. The cult leader only smiled mildly, as though enjoying the sight of a flower. And if Knoxie thrashed any harder, he’d knock over his chair, what little support prevented his arms from being wrenched from their sockets. Bulsara held the other end of the silky rope, and would yank on it now and then to remind him.

  Shakti continued unperturbed, as though narrating a nature film. “Yes. You were special to that one father in particular. Yes, he enjoyed your body the most. I’m sure he liked to grab your penis when you were preparing for mass.”

  As if to make sure Knoxie kept flailing wildly like a caged tiger, the swami reached out his wand and poked Knoxie in the balls. Knoxie reacted as though stabbed with a hot poker. He snapped to his feet just as Bulsara—as expected—tightened the pulley so much that Knoxie was now just a dancing, impotent puppet.

  He knew what the sick swami was doing. It was his “therapy” method—in other words, a tissue-thin excuse to commit any sadistic act Shakti wanted to perpetrate anyway. Literally poke and prod the victim, taunt him with his worst nightmare. Bellamy’s had been the loss of her father, and so they had raped her. Illogical as that seemed to outsiders, to Shakti and his ass-lickers it made some kind of convoluted sense.

  “That’s right,” Shakti said soothingly. “Squirm and protest. That’s the best way to break through the wall. Get angry with the priests! Breathe through it! Embrace it!” All the while, he was prodding and nudging Knoxie’s cock nestled in the crotch of his jeans, curiously and experimentally, as if the wand was an extension of his hand and it was really he who longed to fondle him.

  Knoxie roared, “What do you want from me?” It was starting to occur to him that he might not get out of this unharmed. The question of who had told this pervert about the priests in his church was completely out the window. His frustration mounted higher when he lashed out with his good leg, hitting the swami’s chair with a front snap kick.

  He could only stretch so far though, dangling from his marionette ropes as he was, so the effect was like a puff of air. It startled the swami, who had probably never been on the receiving end of any of his “therapy.” Gasping, he just jerked the chair back a few inches, outside of Knoxie’s jiujitsu reach.

  “Want from you?” Shakti said innocently. “Why, I want to be assured you are going to be compatible with my Asanga. I do not want my work with her to be in vain.”

  “You threw her away, you complete and total sack of shit! You dumped her on that mesa with the other street people whose names you didn’t even know! You dumped her because she had the nerve to get mad when you impregnated her little sister!”

  Apparently Knoxie was enacting some “therapy” on the master now. He leaped to his feet, his mouth set in anger. One gesture at Bulsara and the lackey was winding his end of the rope around a cleat bolted to the wall.

  Knoxie knew it wouldn’t help his case to goad the fucker, but his rage was beyond his control now. This fucker had gotten away with so much shit in his lifetime. So many people had blindly followed him, thrown their lives away, given him all their worldly fortunes. So many women had spread their legs for this colossal asswad, given up their babies for him, acted like robotic, stoned zombies in their eagerness to follow him.

  Now he was importing dope, drugging his citizens, drugging children. He was manipulating the election to favor his kingdom, which would just keep spreading like Ebola. He was selling cheese heroin because he’d spent the money he’d extracted from his people and their heirs. He’d stooped to poisoning a judge, so his outrage
ous power grab was only becoming sicker.

  The master tipped his hand now because Knoxie had the balls to goad him. “That is not why I ejected Asanga! Children are a living, breathing part of life—why would I not want anyone to have a baby?”

  “You reassigned Virginia to a shit detail, Shakti—that’s right, you fucking gave her literally the shittiest work detail so you wouldn’t have to look at her belly getting bigger, knowing you’d done it!”

  It was funny, looking back, how much fury could be contained in one eye. The rage rose in Shakti, coloring his neck, then his chin, then his forehead, flooding that one eye. His hand turned into a claw, and in a flash, like a wild cat, Shakti was upon him.

  It was all so unexpected Knoxie didn’t feel pain at first. The twisted swami grasped his rib cage and bit at his nipple—no, he was biting the red jeweled pin he had going through his areola. He fell on Knoxie like a ravenous demon, snarling and biting. He tore at the crimson jewel with his teeth, spitting it across the shack in an arc of blood.

  Knoxie was in such shock he didn’t react at first. It was all too horrible to comprehend, how deeply the demented leader’s kink went. Even worse, Bulsara was eagerly chanting,

  “The Master is a boat. Once you cross the river, the boat is unnecessary.” He had a high, excited tint to his voice, as though he’d witnessed and enjoyed many scenes like this before.

  Knoxie writhed, big blocks of alternating red and black sucking up everything within his peripheral vision. His instincts gathered, and he violently kneed the leader in the chest, but not before Shakti had smeared his own face in blood. Knoxie had seen some fucked things in the Gulf, but it took the cake when the blinded swami staggered back, a mass of shockingly red blood drizzling from his chin. Knoxie nearly sobbed with frustration, overwhelmed with powerless futility at his situation.

  “My dove!” the crazed ruler cried. An erection tented his loose lavender harem pants. “I will balance your chakras to make you clear and level, align you with the poles to make you whole again! The priests have not finished the work that needs to be done.”