Talking Heads

by John Domini

  “Jesus,” Kit said.

  He’d retreated under the stairs. The hatch lay open and the inspectors stood again, unbuckling their belts.

  “You knew the layout when you came here.” Garrison was glaring. “We’re not showing you anything you didn’t already put in the papers.”

  Kit shook his head, bumping it lightly on the low ceiling.

  “Isn’t anyone on the outside who doesn’t already—”

  The guard’s phone cut on, a repeating alarm whoop.

  The walls went on ringing after Garrison hit the switch. He whispered code numbers at the speaker, and the stink of the crawlspace began to cling.

  I mean, our scene’s attracting tourists, these days. They love it, the lames. They love the whole dank show, AC, DC, lazy greedy lying whatever. They want to get their dirty little thrills seeing it out there on the dance floor—but no way they’re going to dance themselves. No way. Fuckin’ tourists.

  Kit was pulling his face back together, under the low ceiling. Garrison’s whisper wasn’t so loud, he realized. It was just that Junior had stopped his babble. And everybody was suffering nerves by now. Amby, for instance, was holding the tool belt wrong. A pair of pliers was about to slip out of its holster.

  “I am the ranking officer!” the guard said.

  The pliers dropped. A kid’s clatter.

  Garrison signed out and turned to Junior. The officer’s upper body bulged again as he squatted over the young stick. Now Kit couldn’t catch the whisper, and Garrison’s sweat-blotched back prevented anyone from seeing what he was doing with his hands—what he was doing to make Junior’s bare feet jerk round that way. But Kit understood, there was trouble somewhere. Trouble, violence, somewhere on another level. Somewhere else. He knew the word for it, “Disturbance.” Write it with a double underline, keep it at a distance.

  The guard lifted his prisoner. He had Junior’s arms behind him, the wrists high up his back, and swiftly he cuffed the young con to one of the bed chains.

  “Hey.” But whatever Kit had to say wasn’t there, a husk of a thought. The handcuffs clicked and someone grunted.

  “Don’t you give me any grief about brutality, either.”

  Kit brought his head up too fast, whacking it harder than before. Garrison’s head was huge, looming.

  “If I left you down here and this dicksuck had his hands free,” the guard said, “then you’d see some brutality.”

  Left him down here? “Charley …” Kit gripped his notepad in both hands. “Look, I know what’s going on.”

  “We know what’s going on, Charley,” Amby said.

  “Get us out of here,” Ad said. “Get us out of here now.”

  “Let me, let me just say a couple things.” This end of the closet was too tightly packed. When Garrison turned to the inspectors, he touched an elbow to Kit’s gut. “Up there it might not be too bad—I mean, it might not. But the safest place for you guys is down here. I’m telling you. I’ve left people from the outside down on E before.”

  The guard wouldn’t look at Kit, and Kit wouldn’t look at anyone else.

  “Get us out of here,” Ad said.

  “Oh Christ. Guys, this’s nothing. Just stick with the program here, that’s all I’m saying. You got a job to do.” He had Leo’s macho, yes. He repeated that down here was the safest place in Monsod. “The animals are all locked in their cages, down here.”

  The inspectors peered back out the closet door, slackfaced.

  “This’s nothing. Guys, nothing. Christ, we had one of them punk-rock bands in for a concert, you shoulda seen it then. Musicians wanted to meet the cons, whoa. Shoulda seen it. Only way you could tell ‘em apart was, musicians wore the makeup.”

  Kit couldn’t believe it: the inspectors grinned.

  “Let a buncha faggots like that in here, I mean. Then you’d see some trouble.”

  Amby actually laughed. Ad wasn’t quite up to that yet, but his stance relaxed and his smile grew.

  “So I know how to handle this,” the guard said. “Believe me. Let me go handle this, and you stay down here where it’s safe. And you, smart boy—” his face was back in Kit’s—“you’re going to stay away from Junior, there.”

  Kit grunted, boxed in, sweating. The noise was too close to the last sound out of Junior.

  “Hey,” Ad was asking, “who is this Junior anyway?”

  “Yeah Charley. Who’s this Junior?”

  “You guys,” Garrison said.

  Kit was made to put on the tool belt. Both inspectors would have to go down in the crawlspace, and Garrison didn’t want any blunt objects lying around. “I don’t want ‘em anywhere near this animal.”

  Kit raised his arms when he was told to. Garrison, having trouble with Kit’s coat, at first couldn’t cinch the belt. While the guard worked at his waist, Kit could at last look at Junior. The con was able to sit against his bedchains. But his upper body nodded from his irons and he didn’t move below the neck. Unresisting, spread-eagled, he might have been part of the smut sketched above his head. And Junior had started to babble again. Kit tried mouthing those noises, beginning to make sense of the words. “Save my strength,” went the chant, “I got to save my strength.”

  When the guard backed off, Kit couldn’t look any longer.

  The tapes Kit had heard weren’t the work of someone so impaired, so out of touch. Junior’s information had been the McCoy. After an hour transcribing the cassettes, Kit had begun to see slime on his own floor. But then it was hard to believe, as well, that this poor soggy stick had done what he was in here for to begin with.

  “Just stay away from that animal,” Garrison was saying. “He can’t tell you anything anyway.”

  During a break-in, Junior had been discovered by a young couple. This happened in one of new condominiums that dotted the South End, an area starting to gentrify. The couple who’d stumbled in on the burglary was part of the story, or they were a story in themselves. The man was married to another woman, not the one he was with. He had an arrangement that allowed him to use the condo. So he and this latest woman had arrived at an odd hour, a good time for a break-in. And the man hadn’t wanted anyone to know where he’d been; he’d tried to buy Junior off. It made the young crook snap. Junior raped them both, using his razor when the man’s sphincter muscles wouldn’t give. He’d ended up killing the girl.

  When the case came to trial, Ed King had just made Governor. His campaign had promised a hard line against crime, and Rebes got consecutive 35-year terms. It didn’t help that, before the sentencing, his other victim killed himself. The adulterer was found in a hot tub, once again in the South End. He’d opened both wrists with an old Marine K-bar knife, Vietnam-issue, a weapon the man who owned it kept mostly for show. That man had been the adulterer’s pickup—his lover—the night before.

  *

  Garrison took the hatchway lever when he left. He called a last warning before hauling the door shut. “Watch him,” something. Kit couldn’t be sure how long it was before the other cons started up.

  “Garrison!” The voice echoed round the far cell, then flattened over the puddle. “Garrison, you there?”

  “I got your momma in here, Garrison.” A second voice.

  “Garrison! Garrison, hey. The Irish suck the niggers!”

  “Mothafuck’s gone,” a third voice said.

  Silence again. Kit stooped at the closet doorway, looking out over the cells, the wrench hanging heavy. The pain in his head went into his neck. He had nothing to compare this to; he’d never expected fear to be such a drain. The seepage puddle looked deep enough to drown in.

  Fuckin’ tourists. Party punks, y’know. They want to hear someone say they’re a punk, at a party. They want to know the names of the drugs, but no way they’re ever going to risk a glimpse at what the drugs might make them see.

  Aw, Viddich. Rally. Deliberately, Kit recalled Garrison’s insults, and the way the guard had muscled him around. He needed some rage to get the blood flo
wing. Some movement. He ducked out into the central room. The closet cell was too much for him just now, a sadomasochist fantasy, a dream he was ashamed he’d had. The inspectors ignored him anyway, Ad out of sight in the crawlspace and Amby in the hatchway with a flashlight. Junior was shame itself. “Save my strength, save my strength,” S&M, S&M.

  “So who else that out there?”

  The voice could have come from any door.

  “Yeah, mothafuck, who are you?”

  The tool belt rattled and creaked, he felt it in the neck. Working on a chain gang.

  “It’s just us now, handsome.” The nearest door. “That ruckus upstairs gon’ take ol Garrison a while.”

  This voice was Hispanic, Cuban maybe, and the eyes at the slot were black. Kit recalled the migrant workers. He’d done some good for those people.

  “You can’t hide from us, my man. We know what’s happenin’. About fuckin’ time we got a inspection in here.”

  “And we know about them pipes upstairs, sweet butt.” A farther voice. “This time that ol’ Irish dicksuck gon’ be gone for a while.”

  Kit strode round the seepage, come on. Come back, Shane. He got out the notepad again. He was here now, his story right here and nowhere else, the overhead pipes too. Flipping pages, he figured he’d start with the guys on the far side of the puddle. From there he could work round to the closet again. Start with just the voices, then come back to look Junior in the face.

  “That’s right, get the paper out. Get ready.”

  “Talk to us, man. Who are you?”

  “… press,” Kit said.

  “What’s that? What?”

  “He didn’t say nothin. Yo, out there. You with us?”

  The silence renewed briefly, a quiver in the fluorescent light. Kit touched his neck.

  “I’m with the press,” Kit said.

  He sounded remarkably clear that time, even levelheaded. And the response felt better yet, an echoey rumble of almost childish excitement. “The press?” came from behind one door. “The media?”

  “The media, no shit?”

  “Well well well well well.”

  “What newspaper? Hey? Is it the Globe, is that your paper?”

  Kit forced up a laugh. Getting stroked for his work gave him a low pleasure at best—nine times out of ten it only made him aware of some new pretension—but down here he’d take any pick-me-up he could get. By now Kit stood at the head of the puddle, his back to Junior’s cell. The walls were close. As he explained who he was and what he was doing, the words had a tin reverberation.

  “What’s the name?” one of the doors asked. “Sealover?”

  Kit looked left-right among the doors, answering their questions. He regretted the thousand rehearsals he’d had, talking about Sea Level till the spiel sounded stale, far removed from these eyes at their slots. When he glanced at his pad, it was open to the notes on his marriage.

  “Huh.” This came from the door at the head of the room. “You ain’t so special.”

  Kit shrugged, flipping the page.

  “Little dick like you, huh. Why’d they let you in here?”

  “Nigger, what’s your problem?” The Hispanic Kit had heard from first. “Don’t you ever think about nothing but the size of a man’s dick? Media is media, man.”

  “Zoos is right. Right on.”

  “Yo, sealover. Talk to me.”

  “Listen.” Kit tried for the feel of a locker-room bull session. “Any of you guys ever talk to Junior there?”

  “Junior? Junior Rebes? Yo, only people that nigger talk to’s in his head.”

  “Naw,” another door said. “He ain’t so crazy as that. He’s seen some things. It’s just the drugs they givin’ him now.”

  “Drugs?” Kit asked.

  No answer. Was there a banging upstairs, something more than workshop noise?

  “They’re giving him drugs?” he asked.

  Or was it that Junior, off in his tattooed world, had started chanting more loudly? This time his babble was punctuated with grunts. Also the con’s beat drifted, irregular, sleepy. It made Kit think of the time, getting away from him. It reminded him he was still a coward, out here at these farther cells.

  “Look,” he said, “I started with Junior, with his story. I worked with Junior’s mother.”

  “Huh. What kinda story he got? That nigger’s guilty.”

  “Yo, you want a story man? Talk to me.”

  “Yeah, but first,” Kit said, “Junior—”

  “Yo, never mind Junior. Biggest story down here is me.”

  “Hey, sealover. You want personal exclusive, I’ll give you personal exclusive. We’ll get real close.”

  Once more, the talk behind the doors mounted to a rumble. Kit, his pad and pen dropping, tried to think of specific questions. Drugs decay plaster concrete contracts. But then he should’ve expected this. He should’ve realized that every one of them had a wall full of fantasies. God, Junior’s closet had shaken him. Kit recalled the trouble he’d had with Junior’s mother, the struggle to believe in his asking, and he worked now to make the same kind of connection. He noticed again how Boston blacks generally didn’t talk that Superfly stuff, the Southern drawl of blaxploitation. Boston blacks instead had a sound that was almost Italian, high and sharp. You could hear it in Marvin Hagler, the middleweight out of Brockton. A strange, squeaky voice to come from such a scary-looking man.

  Behind Kit’s back there was a new clatter. Horsetack falling into a truck bed.

  “Life, life,” one door was saying. “One mess after another.”

  Kit kept his back to Junior’s cell till he heard the inspectors shouting for help.

  A muffled shouting, another voice from behind a door. But Kit caught the difference. He came round so fast the wrench handle swung out from his leg. And the long tool hurt him, flopping back against his thigh. It made him flinch. Or was it fright, was it what he saw? Framed by the shut door of the utility closet, his meager shadow lanced by the police lock’s bar—the bar now back in place—Junior Rebes stood easy. Free of the bedchain and out with the door shut behind him. At first it even looked like he was no longer handcuffed. Then Kit realized that the yellow gleam at Junior’s crotch was the reflection off the irons still holding his wrists. The skinny con had slipped his arms under him, the old skin-the-cat.

  He seemed so utterly relaxed. Streetcorner. Not till a particularly desperate howl from the inspectors did Kit notice the murderer’s feet. Both were bleeding from the instep, from the heel. The escape had left tarry prints on the floor. Junior rested one foot on top of the other, and Kit could see a strip of ruined seeping skin against the pink underside. Cradling his wounds.

  “Din hurt so bad,” the con said.

  Kit realized he’d been staring at Junior’s feet with his pad in front of his face. Dumbshow fright. The other doors had picked up something and fallen silent.

  “They try to scare you,” Junior said. “They try to make it sound like you be pushin over a mothafuckin old statue or somethin. Shoo.”

  “What—” Kit exhaled hard—“what have you done?”

  The younger man shifted his stance, setting both torn feet on the floor. The pain changed his face. His looks turned triangular. Kit noticed the Indian cheekbones, some red in their color. And beyond Junior, beyond that face, the news was all bad. The police bar sat snug in its housing.

  “Just had to hit on that sucker till the chain broke,” the murderer said. “Just had to hump up and jump on that bed some. Din hurt so bad at all.”

  “Jesus,” Kit said. “How did you, how’d you ever …”

  Never mind. There were the drugs, there was Junior’s blood-frenzy. Enough. Already Kit was sizing the man up. He figured he had the edge: three-four inches in height, two free hands unslowed by downers, a cattleman’s upper body as opposed to the balsa-wood lankness of a street thief. And yet Junior’s looks—Kit, trembling, had to blink and make sure—were much like his own. Those prominent cheekbones, b
aby lips, hollow cheeks. The Nazi movie in sepia.

  Talk to him, Viddich.

  “Junior.” His throat was sandpaper. “I know you.”

  “Yeah.” The con shuffled forward, winced again. “I heard what you told the guys. You the one been talkin’ to my Mama.”

  “You heard?” Kit wrung his notepad like a rag. “Junior, listen to me. I know this—”

  “You don’t know shit!”

  Kit’s hands worked on their own, stashing the pad. Junior’s wail had brought the other cells to life. Worse noise than before, worse even than upstairs. Everybody started screaming bloody murder. Grease the motherfucker, grease him Junior, rip out his faggot balls.

  Junior waved his cuffed fists, swamp conductor.

  “You just want the story,” he shouted. “You want to take your fuckin’ story and get outta here!”

  Kit had no answer. Down in Monsod, the meanest things ever said about the news business had come true. He was the parasite, the fake. Every gesture came off empty and two-dimensional.

  Junior kept up the insults, half audible in this noise. He swayed but remained where he was.

  Was it the stink that made Kit’s eyes water? He took stock of the foyer, the cells. The locks on the bolts across the doors were the size of a fist, too much even for Junior’s supernatural strength. But the foundation had shifted, a couple of doors rattled. He saw a nut wobble on the nearest frame.

  “Sweet butt,” Junior said more quietly. “Pretty boy. Now whyn’t you give me the belt?”

  Kit stepped away from the doors, from the one wobbling door. He splashed into the room’s center.

  “Aw now where you gon’ run to, sweet boy? Huh. I’m the worst thing you ever seen in your life, you know?”

  “Can’t get away from the worst thing,” one of the doors called. “Sooner or later, you bound to run smack face to face.”