Madeleine, throwing one leg over the adjoining bar stool, interrupted. “Hey, Liz, get him to sing that song again. You know, Mr. Galeer, that hillbilly song you were doing for us in the car.” She was still topless, with a girls’ locker room casualness about her.
I was about to ask how they knew each other when Liz murmured, “Hi, babe,” and cradled Madeleine’s hand in hers. She stroked Mad’s fingertips, gazing into her eyes. If Madeleine’s were the hands of a murderess, Liz obviously didn’t believe it. The two took a trip to the powder room together.
Artie sat down on the other side of me, helped himself to a sip of my drink, and did an exaggerated spit-take. “What the fuck is that?”
“Club soda.”
“Here,” he said, switching his drink for mine. “You need this more than I do.” I recognized it by the taste: straight tequila.
“There’s some a’ that Cuervo Gold you been singin’ about,” he said, waggling a bottle he had hidden under his coat. “Go on, drink up before Lucretia Borgia comes back.”
Artie watched me drink, seeming to derive second-hand enjoyment out of it. I thought maybe I should try drinking vicariously. It seemed to work for Liz.
When Liz finally returned the first thing she noticed was the near-empty margarita glass in front of me. “Ricky, what am I going do with you? And you,” she went on, turning to Artie, “you’re the best incentive for a No Men Allowed policy I can think of.”
“Don’t get your jockstrap in a Windsor knot,” he said. “I’ll be happy to leave. Only thing is, she leaves with me.”
I caught Liz staring at Madeleine, looking downcast returning from the ladies’ room with a fresh suck mark on each of her breasts.
“Uh-huh,” Artie said. “I thought so. Anyway, how lucid you want him once the show starts?”
I felt free as a bird. I needed to say something. “How come you’re talking about me in the first permanent...the pirst firmanent...” An impotent rage filled me; I couldn’t spit out the words.
“Talk much?” Artie jeered, winking at Liz.
Madeleine chimed in. “Yeah, who taught you to talk?”
Something like the sound of a pleasant buzzer filled my senses. I thought if I were to strip down and prance around naked, I could swing all the women in the room over to hetero. I wanted to bang Liz three ways. I tried to tell her so, thinking she’d regard it as a compliment, but it all came out in sleep-talk mumblings.
I heard Artie say, “Kinda hard to function behind all that Easy Lay, ain’t it, Counselor?” But I was still staring at Liz and couldn’t figure out where his voice was coming from.
The rest of the night shattered into strobe-glimpses of memory for me. Somebody killed the lights and music on a prearranged signal, leaving only the eerie headlamp glare of the emergency lights. What followed seemed a macabre shadow play. The scent of rubbing alcohol-swabbed bodies doing a glinting saber-dance of scalpels, lancets, phlebotomes, and syringes. A clear glass vessel, its mouth lovingly cupped over a fresh wound with a Bic lighter held at the other end, filling up with blood like a brandy snifter. Madeleine full in her courses, reclining on the bar, her feet in the chrome arches of the waitress station as in stirrups, offering herself up to a procession of women. Misuse of a breast pump someone had thought to bring to the party.
And Artie in the center of it, watching it all. Always Artie, laughing, gleeful—a latter-day Steve Rubell of the blood clubs. I sat beside him, the only other male in the place, as though for mutual protection against the sanguinary excesses going on all around us.
“I’m only gonna tell you this because confession is good for the soul,” he said to me. “Plus you’re so fucked up on Easy Lay, you won’t remember nothin’, anyway.” He expertly prepared a hypodermic needle. I thought at first he would be taking part in the blood-soaked festivities, but he took out a glassine envelope, did something with a spoon I couldn’t quite follow, then injected himself with the concoction. His eyes caught the glare of the lights; his neck cords tuned tighter.
“That little explosion in the trailer park? That was a stiff named Pete Weegers with my ID on him they found, also a little bitch that was cranking up to testify against me at my trial. We did a little impromptu makeover—pierced her face just like Mad’s and hung all Mad’s jewelry on her. She didn’t like it much. We had to load her up with the same cocktail I’m giving you.”
Liz caught sight of Artie shooting up. She pulled herself away from a three-way blood draw and came over mad, punctured, and half-dressed.
“How many times I have to tell you, no slamming in here? Especially tonight.” She jerked her head toward one busied covey of women. “We’re entertaining some of the ladies of law enforcement this evening.”
I stared in that direction. Squinting past the deliberately blinding headlights, I thought I recognized Bobbi Cox, her tongue lapping like a tabby cat’s to catch the bloody ooze from a female bailiff’s slit ankle pulse point. Was it possible she didn’t recognize Artie from his mug shot, the straggly shoulder-length hair and stringy Rasputin beard now swept away as easily as a Halloween wig and false whiskers?
“You’re only in here at all because you’re both prodigies,” Liz said. “Don’t abuse the privilege.” She took the syringe from Artie, dipped and rinsed it in and out of one of the rubbing alcohol bottles that ranged along the bar and on every table like Chablis candles, and remarked, “I can use this.” She returned to her companions.
“Whass progidy?” I asked Artie.
“Pro-di-gy,” Artie enunciated. “It’s what you have to thank for that big cod between your legs, Counselor. See, whenever one of the Lilith cult gets knocked up the old-fashioned way, and it’s a boy, he’s always hung with a dong like King Kong. You, me, we’re all cut from the same cloth. A prodigy is a demon child. Nothing personal.”
Maybe I passed out. The next thing I remember was riding along, lying in the back of the hearse. Must have been somebody’s idea of a joke. Seeing the revolving red lights reflected against the hearse’s interior and hearing what sounded like a familiar tap of the siren. Artie exclaiming, “Oh, fuck me.”
Familiar crunch of heavy shoes, in no hurry on gravel shoulder. Four ominous taps of nightstick on window, to the rhythm of Beethoven’s Fifth. Diaz’s voice asking, “Where’s the fire?”
“We’re fireproof,” Artie said.
“That ain’t what I heard.”
“Just takin’ a sick friend home, ossifer,” Artie said.
“You stupid fuck,” Diaz said. “You can’t even play dead worth a shit. Where’s the talisman?”
“Mad’s got it stashed up her twat. Wanna fish it out?”
I heard, by way of an answer, the battering-ram crack of Diaz’s nightstick slamming into Artie’s face. I guessed Diaz had hit a bull’s-eye right in his philtrum. Artie seemed to heave a sigh, then the sound of the horn split the quiet night as Artie lolled against the wheel.
“I don’t have it,” Madeleine whimpered, suddenly terrified. “I thought Artie took it with us when we left the club after I danced.”
Someone shoved Artie off the horn. I found the quiet rather refreshing. “After you danced? You wacked-out slut, you’re supposed to be dead. Where the fuck did you dance? And where’s that talisman?” Diaz slapped her hard across the face, twice. The sounds of slaps and a woman’s screams brought back fond memories of my childhood.
I struggled to speak—to cry out the news that all was well, that I had the talisman safely ensconced in my pants—but the words wouldn’t come. I drifted back to sleep. When I groggily awoke again, Diaz must have been driving the hearse.
We were turning, driving on gravel, turning again. Lights brighter and more colorful than streetlamps told me we were back at the Sphincter Club. Diaz brought the hearse to a sliding stop, sprang out, and slammed the driver’s door loud enough to wake the dead. I heard the passenger door fly open and Madeleine’s weak protests as he jerked her out and started dragging her toward the front entrance.
“Get your ass in there,” he snarled. “You’re gonna show me exactly what table you were sitting at, crawl on your hands and knees if you have to until you find me that fucking dagger.”
I listened to their retreating footsteps, then waited a full minute more. Artie moaned like the ghost of Hamlet’s father with hemorrhoids. I knew I couldn’t talk, but when I was much younger I’d learned to walk a full year before I’d managed to pick up on the talking. How much harder could it be to drive?
I sat up in the hearse and felt the shock of my life’s first hangover all over again. I peeked in on Artie, still slumped over in the front seat. He looked like somebody’d tried hiding an Easter egg under his upper lip.
I managed to open the rear hatch and pour myself out onto the parking lot. When I stood and tried to reel my way back to my car, I felt like the first astronaut on Jupiter.
“Jew-peter,” I said to myself, trying to talk and walk at the same time. “Sat-in-urine. Your anus.”
A trucker climbing down from his cab called out, “Better sober up, friend.”
Sound advice. Doctor, what should I take for my condition? Why, take advice, to be sure. Had I said it out loud? I glanced back at the trucker. He was already heading into the club.
My car wouldn’t go forward. And yet the emergency brake was off. Then I realized my car’s front end was wedged against some other gentleman’s bumper. So sorry for the inconvenience, but I really can’t stay. I lowered the driver’s side window for a little air, backed up like it was the first day of driver’s ed, then dropped the shifter into drive and off I went, easy as that.
Back to town, back to town. I got lost heading down the wrong moonlit ribbon of blacktop and finally had to turn around in a farm lane. The damn lane was so narrow, with a steep ditch on either side, that I drove a quarter mile before reaching the farmstead. I tried a full-circle turn in the farmyard, striking up against the wood frame supporting an elevated diesel tank someone had carelessly left there. Drat! Have to do that backing-up trick again. I’d nearly made it back to the blacktop when I heard a loud report coming from the direction of the farmhouse and sounding suspiciously like someone discharging a firearm. A load of buckshot rained against the roof and trunk of my car. Maybe I could report it to my insurance carrier as hail damage.
Now that I’d reached the end of the farm lane, I couldn’t remember which way to turn. Panicking, I turned left and pressed the accelerator to the floor. The steering seemed sluggish to respond when I tried to make the curves, and I kept having to correct the oversteer. Must get that looked at by a professional mechanic if I ever made it home alive. I knew I was running from someone or something, but who or what it was had momentarily slipped my mind. Oh, bother!
I passed the Sphinx Lounge. Thought about going in for a highball, but couldn’t slow down in time to make the driveway and turning around again was too intimidating to coordinate. At least I was finally going the right direction.
An asshole in a damn black station wagon, motoring along dangerously close in front of me at less than half my speed. I tapped my horn to warn him of my presence, but he wouldn’t pull over. His arrogance offended me; I tapped again. No response. I began tapping the horn in rhythm to Jingle Bells. I had just gotten to Oh, what fun it is to ride when the angry red Mars light flashed on in the car ahead.
For the first time that evening, I thought of my license. Not that one—my license to practice law. I pulled over onto a weed-grown concrete industrial site littered with glass. A familiar flashlight-toting silhouette approached me from the hearse. I was almost relieved to see Diaz. That relief turned to fear when he dragged me, keys still in hand, from my car with a take-down force I hadn’t felt since high school wrestling, twisted my arm up to shoulder-blade level, and threw me into the hearse, saying “Watch your head, peckerhead.”
He unplugged the Mars light cord from the cigarette lighter. I rode beside him in silence back to Belleville. Artie and Mad had disappeared. When I asked about them, he replied, “Who?” Certain I would be breath-tested, blood-tested, photographed, videotaped, fingerprinted, and arrested for DUI as soon as we reached the jail, I kept my mouth shut after that.
Close to Fifth and F Streets, Diaz parked on the street. “Come on in,” he said. “You’ve never been to our house before, have you? Ellen’s and mine.”
It was a funky old house on a full-size lot in a quiet neighborhood. All the trees had been cut; the lot looked like shaved pubes. We walked up steep concrete steps. The screened-in porch door screeched and banged behind us. Diaz unlocked the heavy front door and pushed it open. It dragged on the sill. Somehow the place didn’t smell lived-in anymore. It had probably become just a place for him to crash. In the darkness, I had the impression of facing a dusty, unused sitting room.
“Go downstairs to your right,” he said. “Flip the light switch first, there on the far wall. Wet bar in the basement. Help yourself.”
He didn’t have to ask me twice. Given the events of the evening, any wet bar was a welcome oasis. The finished staircase creaked as I went down. Diaz didn’t follow me right away. When I reached the bottom, I patted a paneled wall around a corner like a blind man until I found a second switch. Bar signs, black lights, and retro lava lamps came alive, making the place look like it had been decorated from Spencer’s at the mall. But it was enough light for me to find the bar and pour myself a post-glasnost quantity of Stoly over rocks.
I sat at one of the three bar stools and looked the room over. Cheap paneling peeling off here and there from a frame built to hide stone walls. The place must have flooded now and then, like most basements in Belleville. Smelled like it, too. A fold-out bed, open and unmade. A card table with a laundry basket on top of it and no chairs. A tile floor, also peeling badly. Several tiles had lifted up completely from the adhesive. The place couldn’t stand much light. No windows at all—either the old basement didn’t have any originally or the paneling hid them.
I turned away from the claustrophobic ugliness of the room and faced the bar. There were two fully stocked glass shelves of premium liquor, as wide a selection as any cocktail bar. And on the top shelf, a row of four apothecary jars matching those I’d seen in Liz’s shop. Did they contain cocktail onions? Maraschino cherries? Pickled boiled eggs? Curious, I stood and walked behind the bar to get a better look.
A pair of hands in each of the first three jars. Feminine hands, partially clenched as though bound with cords, amputated at the wrists. In the fourth a man’s penis and testicles.
Behind me, Diaz’s voice inquired calmly, “Like my collection?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Sound of One Hand Slapping
Somehow I knew he’d be carrying. Sure enough, when I spun around, his service revolver pointed at the level of my glabella. The menace was there, but something else, too: pride. The pride of a big game hunter showing the infrequent guest around his trophy room.
“Why?” I asked him.
He shrugged. Even that gesture frightened me. Suddenly I feared his uncertainty more than his resolve. In shirtsleeves and a shoulder holster, he looked militaristic and terrifying. For a split-second, I flashed on the idea that I’d be executed by pistol shot in a basement like Tsar Nicholas and family. The Russian Church Abroad considered them saints. I wouldn’t achieve the same distinction.
He must have seen my eyes dart behind the bar, looking frantically for a second weapon. “Hands on the bar,” he ordered, tired and without emotion. “Keep ‘em there. Now move around and sit down—you’re a guest, after all.”
I resumed my seat behind my drink. He sat down, one stool between us, and laid his snub-nosed Colt Python on the bar. Within his easy reach. Caught me eyeing it.
“Don’t even think about it, Counselor. You’d be dead before you hit the floor.” He gestured to something I hadn’t yet noticed in the dim lighting: target-range paper silhouettes hung on the far wall, their kill-zones tattered with singed bullet holes.
&nbs
p; “I qualify every thirty days with this thing,” he said. “Now finish your drink and relax. What were you asking again? Oh, yeah. Why the collection. You might say it serves a utilitarian purpose.”
“What’s that?”
Diaz reholstered his weapon, passed behind the opposite end of the bar, and retrieved the first jar on the left. He placed it carefully on the bar and removed the lid by its glass knob. The smell of formalin solution quickly overpowered the Stoly fumes. He rolled up one long-cut sleeve, reached into the jar, and lifted out one severed hand, its fingernails still blood-red, although the flesh had darkened to burgundy leather.
“Carla,” he said. He crossed to the fold-out bed, sat down, reached under and found a jar of petroleum jelly, then began working the Vaseline into the palm of the dead hand through the crook between thumb and forefinger, as though curing and lubricating a baseball glove. The fingers remained stiffly curled against the thumb, poised as if to grip a broomstick.
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