Header 3

by Edward Lee

  Brice looked as if into a spiraling abyss. The reward for his effort was not immediately recognizable but after several moments of horrific contemplation, his brain pieced it together. It was a man without skin, yes, that had been entrenched under the blonde; without skin, that is, except for the face, which sheer, incogitable horror had turned into an inhuman rictus. Between the dead man’s sinewy legs was a queer lump the size of a lopsided basketball, perhaps, surrounded by uneven folds or flaps. Eventually, Brice figured it to be the entirety of the drug-dealer epidermis.

  Stoody pulled the woman’s left knee back, to spread her legs in a lewd splay. He brought his hand to her sex and fiddled around. “Yeah, just as I thought. Pussy’s dry as dirt, no point ‘n double dippin’.” The grin flashed upward. “But I’ll bet a pot’a gold to a bucket’a dog shit, I can find me some juice,” and with this, he stuck his finger into the hole in the top of her skull. “Yep. Still wet, no worms yet.”

  Stoody kneed around to the most efficacious position, and unbuckled his pants.

  “No-no-no, please,” Brice gasped. “Tell me you’re not going to fuck a dead girl!”

  Stoody winked. “Sorry, brother, but I can’t tell no lies. My mama brung me up better’n that. See, I am gonna fuck a dead girl…in the head. Most times they’se dead ’for the header anyhow. I’m just pickin’ one up off the floor a bit later than normal.”

  He rested back on his knees and pulled the girl closer by her armpits until the top of her head was in his lap.

  “You can’t be serious,” Brice croaked, and it was at this moment he witnessed the most obscene occurrence of his life:

  He saw a man’s erection sink into a dead woman’s head.

  “Does it look like I ain’t serious?” Stoody cracked, and then laughed. “Ooh, boy! Fits like a glove, it does!”

  And then he began to thrust.

  Brice felt stricken to a pillar of salt as he looked down helplessly. The sound of the act was nearly as obscene as the act itself…

  PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP!

  Stoody’s buttocks pumped as blond woman’s arms and legs lay extended and still.

  PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP!

  “Chance of a lifetime, brother,” Stoody said over his shoulder. “You can have her after me…”

  Brice broke from his paralysis, teetering on his feet. He stumbled off into the woods, his footsteps thrashing.

  “Ya don’t know what’cher missin’, man!” Stoody yelled amid the task at hand. “A header is the best feelin’ in the world!”

  PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP!

  Brice clapped his hands over his ears and broke into a wild run. Masses of thoughts tried to assail him but he managed to blot them out. He was simply running, running away from the atrocity, and if he had to he could continue like this, his mind a blank, and not stop running till he was back to Manhattan. He vomited as he ran, but merely turned his head to keep from getting any of it on him, somehow managing not to run into a tree in the process. He had no idea what direction he was taking, no gauge whatsoever of his position in relation to the motel, the town, anything, but next thing he knew, he’d stumbled out of the trees onto a moon-lit road, and—

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Twin white lights blinded him, tires shrieked insanely. Brice heard a car horn blaring and men yelling, but it never occurred to him that he was about to be run down by a car.

  Or almost run down.

  He stood still in the headlights, eyes wide in shock. The front of the grill was inches from his knees. He could see the logo on the hood: BMW.

  Before his senses returned he was being grabbed, then shoved toward the vehicle. “You fuckin’ crazy ass!” It was Augie’s voice. “We almost killed ya!” and then he was being pushed into the front passenger seat. Seconds later, Augie was behind the wheel and driving off.

  “Are you drunk?” Clark asked from the back seat. “We almost ran you over in your own car! What were you doing jumping out in the road like that?”

  “I…” Brice attempted. “I don’t know.”

  “I thought you were going back to the motel.”

  “I was but…shit.”

  “What the fuck’s wrong with you?” Augie yelled.

  Brice had to take deep breaths into order to structure his thoughts. “You guys won’t believe what I just saw—”

  Clark leaned forward from the back seat. “Yeah? Well you won’t believe what we just did.”

  For a crazy moment, Brice just knew they were going to say they’d done a header. “What do you mean?” He was blinking away confusion. “And why were you sitting back there?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Augie said. “We’ve leaving town. Now.”

  Brice squinted. “But I thought…Hey, you guys are acting really weird. What gives?”

  “We fucked up, that’s what gives. Clark, give him the short version.”

  Clark sighed in a way that could only be described as dismal. “Jesus, Brice. When we left Backtown, we picked up a hitchhiker—you know, that girl…”

  “What girl?” Brice snapped.

  “The retarded girl with the big tits,” Augie answered.

  “Yeah? So?”

  “And, well, shit,” Clark faltered, “we put some moves on her, you know? And she seemed all right with it at first.”

  “You put moves on her?” Brice’s face went dark with suspicion. “Wait, what do you mean she seemed all right with it at first?”

  “Just listen, man!” Augie exploded. “We started doing her!”

  “Doing her?” The atrocities he had witnessed tonight had not erased his memory of Babba’s twisted face, and he could not reconcile the thought of “doing her” with that.

  Augie picked up the thread. “Yeah! Banging her! I went first, then Clark, and next thing we know she’s screaming…”

  Brice went still, looked slowly at Augie, then slowly at Clark. “You assholes aren’t about to tell me you raped a retarded girl, are you?”

  “I wouldn’t call it rape,” Augie replied very quickly.

  “You said she was screaming!” Brice bellowed.

  “Yeah,” Clark said, “but at first she didn’t seem to object. I offered her twenty bucks to show her boobs, so she did.”

  “Sounds like consent to me,” Augie added.

  Brice looked cockeyed at both of them. “You idiots! To a judge, it’s impossible for someone mentally incompetent to give sexual consent! At the very least you’re guilty of second degree rape, not to mention a shitload of other felonies!”

  Augie grimaced. “Okay, fine! We did it, and there’s no taking it back! We should just leave town. The way I see it, we’re safe—”

  “Safe?” Brice continued to yell. “Where do you get that?”

  “She can’t tell anyone ’cos she can’t talk, and even if she could, it’s her word against ours, and she’s fuckin’ retarded!”

  Brice wrung his hands in disgust. “Holy shit, I thought I’d heard everything tonight, but now you guys go and rape a retarded girl!”

  Clark edged his face closer out of the back. “That’s, uh, that’s not the worst part, Brice…”

  Brice glared. “How can it get any worse?”

  Augie and Clark fell silent.

  “Come on! Spit it out!” Brice shouted.

  Clark sighed. “Evidently, she’d never had sex before. There was…a lot of bleeding…”

  “Well, where the hell is she? You took her to a hospital, right?”

  “No, man,” Augie said. “We had no choice. We left her in the woods and split.”

  Brice nearly gagged on the information. “You gotta be shitting me!”

  “She bled all over the back seat but we got it cleaned up pretty good,” Clark said.

  Brice’s face fell into his hand. “Oh, no, no, no…”

  “Look, it’s over and done with,” Augie snapped. “There’s nothing we can do now. If we’d had any idea it would go down like that, we never would have done it. We would
have at least, you know, gone back door or something, but that’s neither here nor there. I say we pack our bags and go back to New York tonight.”

  “Use your head, Augie! We just told the old lady at the motel we’d be staying a week! If we suddenly disappear, how would that look?”

  “He’s right, Augie,” came Clark’s grim remark. “It’ll make us look guilty as hell.”

  “What’s this us shit?” Brice exploded. “You guys did it!”

  “Yeah, but you’re with us, Brice,” Augie remained. “And you know about it. You’re the fuckin’ lawyer. Isn’t there some statute or something about failing to report knowledge of a crime?”

  “Yeah, it’s called misprision of a felony, and I ought to go to the cops right now!”

  “For shit’s sake. I’m your brother and Clark’s our best friend,” Augie sounded confident. “You’re not a rat.”

  Brice wanted to grab Augie by the throat. “No, I’m not, but this is still fucked up and I didn’t do anything to make it that way!”

  Augie kept his cool. “We’re in this together, buddy bro. And the three of us are probably smarter than anyone in this shit-pit white-trash county. If we use our heads, we walk clean out of this. Shit, man, you saw her. I bet if you turn her in a circle three times, she’ll forget the whole fuckin’ thing. “

  “You got it all figured out, don’t you?” Brice fumed. “And what if the girl dies? Did you ever think of that? Then it’s murder!”

  “I don’t think she’ll die, Brice,” Clark said. “The bleeding had begun to abate.”

  Augie nodded. “And if the bitch does die, she’ll be doing us a favor. We left her way back in the woods. If she croaks, animals’ll eat her.”

  Brice just stared.

  “And we never should’ve come to this cracker hell hole in the first place,” Augie added.

  “It was your fuckin’ idea!” Brice bellowed. “You and your fuckin’ Dick Gurgler!”

  “Everybody just calm down!” Clark snapped.

  A stasis settled; only the sound of the vehicle’s tires over asphalt could be heard. Brice chewed a knuckle, thinking, thinking. Stoody outlined what an intolerant community this was for criminals, but there wasn’t a reason to suspect Augie and Clark, was there? The guilty reaction would be to flee. Eventually, he said, very calmly. “All right, we’re gonna play it cool. We’ll go back to the motel, get cleaned up, then we’ll go back to Sallee’s. We have to act normal. We’re just three guys from New York on a bender checking out a new town. We’re on vacation, so we have to look like we’re on vacation.”

  “It makes sense,” Clark said, but he was still shaking.

  “Augie,” Brice said. “You hearing this.”

  “Yeah. That’s what we’ll do.”

  “Let’s just hope nobody thinks a couple of rich city morons like you would try to molest some mentally disabled girl.”

  Augie looked like he had something to say about that, but Brice backed him off with a hard glare. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered to himself. He couldn’t seem to go anywhere tonight without receiving a tremendous shock.

  Not too long after, they’d parked the SUV in the motel lot. The town all around them felt oddly still and quiet; the same notion followed them into the motel. Augie, upon Brice’s instruction, started talking about baseball when they crossed the front lobby. “Fuckin’ Yankees! How can those bums get swept by fourth place Tampa Bay at home? Fuckin’ payroll’s two hundred and twenty mil!”

  It sounded convincing. The shabby night clerk at the desk smiled, nodded, and went back to her Fifty Shades of whatever.

  Brice’s eyes bugged once they were safely back in their room. Augie and Clark both had smudges of blood on their hands and shorts.

  “Jesus Christ! You guys got blood on you. Go take showers, change your clothes. We’ll have to get rid of them later. It’s a damn good thing the lobby was dark. And I hope to God you guys used rubbers ’cos if you didn’t, you left DNA evidence.”

  “We used rubbers, Brice,” Augie said. “Don’t shit a brick.”

  Brice rubbed his face. “I still can’t believe you guys could do something like this.”

  “Neither can we,” Clark said. He looked ashamed, but Brice wondered if that was from taking advantage of the girl or if it was pretty much all from the blood scare.

  “Just get in the shower and get those clothes changed. I’m going to the convenience store for some cigarettes.”

  Augie gave him a funky look. “You quit smoking years ago.”

  “Yeah, and I just restarted.”

  Certain areas of the carpet crunched when Brice headed down the hall. Otherwise not a sound could be heard. It was as if the motel had been abandoned, but the same abandonment lingered when he got outside. No town traffic, no people about, total silence on the street. His mind stayed blank when he went into the 7-Eleven clone at the end of the block; he was in and out with his purchase without even being aware. He leaned against the brick wall by an old pay phone, staring out. When he smoked his first cigarette in years, he didn’t taste it.

  Christ, what’s next?

  Sallee’s was right across the street, all flashing and blinking in neon. Finally the eerie silence broke as a group of rednecks piled out of a clunker car and noisily barged into the strip joint. Then the street fell dead-silent again.

  Brice almost shrieked when his cell phone rang.

  The caller ID said, “VAN”; John Van Dreelen, an office associate. He thought of sending to voice mail, but decided he could use a distraction before his heart burst in his chest. “Hey, Van. How’re things in the Big Apple?”

  “Same old, same old. And how are things down in Timbuktu?”

  “Fabulous,” Brice replied, close to gagging. “You all finish the Levanthorpe deposition?”

  “It’s out the door and everything else is running smooth,” but then a pause drifted over the line.

  “Why the foreboding pause?” Brice asked. “Something wrong at the office?”

  “Well, sort of, I guess. It’s the damnedest thing…I worked late tonight so I decided to have a few drinks at the bar at Le Bernadin. A minute later someone takes the stool next to me: Glen Starns. Can you believe it?”

  Brice smirked. “Bryson’s CFO. He’s the guy—”

  “Right, the stiff prick who terminated the Bryson account. He barely remembered me, but shit, I had a couple in me by then, so I just flat out asked him. I said, ‘Hey, how come you guys pulled the account from us and gave it to Hathoway’s firm?’”

  Brice’s eyes widened. He’d never been given a good reason. “What did he say?”

  “He said they did a background on you and found a Form 1852.”

  “What!” The exclamation exploded through the street. “That’s bullshit!”

  “He said you had four ethics charges pending by NAA and the state attorney’s office—”

  “That’s ridiculous! I don’t have anything pending! I never had!”

  “That’s what I told him, but he didn’t believe me.”

  Brice ground his teeth. “I’ll bet it was that rat fuck Hathoway, piped them a bogus form.”

  “Probably, but how do we prove it? Funny thing is Starns said the account numbers matched former clients of ours. That’s confidential shit. No way in hell Hathoway could get our numbers.”

  Brice had the phone pressed to his ear so hard it hurt. “He got ’em somehow ’cos I swear to God I’ve never had a Form 1852 filed on me. I’m a lawyer, I lie all the time, but I’m not going to lie to you. I’ve been knifed by that goddamn Hathoway more times than Julius fucking Caesar.” Brice had to close his eyes and take some deep breaths. “Look, Van, I can’t get out of here for a while, so just sit tight, all right? And look into this for me.”

  “Will do, boss. Later.”

  Brice put the phone away, spewing cigarette smoke. He could make nothing out of what he’d just heard. A competitor had filed an erroneous complaint against him? The Manhattan rumor mil
l was labyrinthine. People make up bullshit about other people all the time, just to see it if sticks, he realized. But this was serious. If Hathoway manufactured this smear-job, I’m gonna sue him till he can’t see straight. He’ll think a stone quarry landed on his head. We’ll see how Marcie likes him after he’s disbarred.

  But this new conundrum, severe as it was, seemed like tiddlywinks compared to the matter at hand.

  My brother and Clark just raped a retarded hillbilly girl! Brice wanted to punch the brick wall. The hits just keep on comin’!”

  Across the street, Augie and Clark came out of the motel, Augie bearing a big grin. At least he’s a decent actor, Brice thought. Their blood-spotted clothes had been replaced.

  Augie waved. “Come on, Brice! Let’s throw a few back!” He headed straight for Sallee’s. Clark came up to Brice in front of the convenience store, and whispered, “We scrubbed our old clothes out and put ’em in plastic bags—we’ll get rid of them tomorrow.”

  “Good.”

  “Augie’s going to the bar now. I’ll be right there—I gotta get a pack of cigarettes.”

  Brice winced. “I thought you quit years ago.”

  “I just restarted.”

  A bell clanged when Clark entered the store. Brice sighed and stubbed out his cigarette in the change slot of a receiverless pay phone. He headed across the street to Sallee’s.

  But had he looked a little closer at the phone, he would’ve seen a knife-scratched graffito on the side-board: a male stick-figure inserting its penis into the head of a female stick-figure.

  And when Brice had departed, two shadows moved across the sidewalk and were eventually revealed as a pair of massive grinning men with identical faces.

  Tucker and Clyde Larkins. Guffawing as was common with them, they bellied into the store…

  ««—»»

  Walking from the near dead-silence into the cacophony of the strip joint made Brice feel swallowed by some abyssal beast. Just as their first visit, strobe lights flashed manically, heavy three-chord rock music pounded, nude strippers twirled machinelike on brass poles. In the single minute it took him to sit with Augie at a rear booth, Brice’s skull become an adobe for a monumental tension headache.