“The who?”
“Primitives from Papua, New Guinea. Lived smack-dab in the Indonesian archipelago.”
Asking if this was the one about the where-the-fuck-are-wes, calling Miro Merle again, Wally checked his watch, pretty sure it was Sunny’s afternoon off.
Mitch pointed at Miro’s beer. “I’ll take one of those, if you got?”
“Go ahead, but I ain’t your maid.” Miro shot a thumb toward the kitchen, taking the joint from Wally. “Cold ones are in back.”
“So what the fuck’s with these mudmen?” Wally said, looking at his watch again.
“Yeah, see, these hostiles from the other end of the island came to kick the shit out of them, but the mudmen were savvy, see? They spot these guys with spears and warpaint coming and hightailed it into this swamp.”
Wally sank back, trying to picture the scene.
“The hostiles knew the swamp to be full of evil spirits, so they stayed the fuck out, letting the spirits take care of business. Job done, so the hostiles paid the lady mudmen a visit. But when night came, the mudmen crept out, covered head to toe in swamp mud. They hightailed it back to their village, the mud drying white, making them look like ghouls.”
Wally nodding now, getting into the story, saying, “Let me guess, the hostiles were banging the mudmen babes, their spears laying on the ground. Nobody on watch.”
“One look at the mudmen all white in the moonlight and the hostiles took off screaming and running, never to return.”
Taking the joint, Wally thought about it, then asked what the fuck it had to do with hitting a grow-op. Mitch came back with three longnecks, setting them down, said he didn’t get it either. Wally took a beer, looking at Bruna walking from the bedroom, offering her a toke. His eyes on her as she leaned in and made a circle of her lips, drawing in the smoke.
“It’s just to illustrate . . .” Miro started to say, thinking these people were too stupid for analogies. “Fuck it.”
“Look, Merle, in spite of what happened at Artie’s, me and Mitch know our business.”
“Sure you do, but this is a different game, boys,” Miro said.
“A game with a chance of getting smoked,” Mitch said, twisting off the cap.
“You got your P5 in your pants, don’t you, Mitch?” Miro asked him. “What you do is point it, and take what you want.”
“And going in armed gets us extra jail time.”
“In this game, nobody’s going to call the cops. No chance of doing time.”
Wally peeled his eyes from Bruna as she left the room, asking Miro, “You ever do any real time, I mean other than three months for bullshit?”
“Too smart for that, but let me ask you one, what’s the most you two ever took breaking into places?”
“No matter what I say, you’re going to say what you got’s better.” Wally glanced around the apartment, sucking on the spent roach, saying, “Guess that’s why you live in the Dump Towers.”
“Getting real sick of your shit,” Miro said.
“Then how about you cut all this mudmen crap, and get down to it.” Wally reached for the baggie of Miro’s weed on the table, then the papers. “I’m up for anything worth being up for. Don’t need your pep talk.” Wally crumbled bud onto the paper, rolled it up and licked the edge. “Thing I want to know is how come you got a hate on for this Artie Poppa guy?”
Easing back, Miro flicked the lighter for him, then got into telling them how he and Stax worked for Artie at the Christina Lake plantation before it all went indoors, how he perfected the strains, adapting silent diesel generators to keep the hydro usage down, setting up the high-tech hydroponic environments for dozens of operations, all of them mid-sized with five hundred to a thousand plants to keep them flying under the radar. How it was the high temperatures and humidity that left Miro with a puffer in his mouth and asthma in his lungs. Artie showing no consideration, Miro not mentioning how Artie nicknamed him Popeye on account of the puffers looking like pipes. When the asthma became full-blown, Artie tossed his ass out in the street.
“No Workers’ Comp, huh?” Wally said.
“You fucking asked.”
“Yeah, so you’re a disgruntled employee,” Wally said.
“How about you let him tell it,” Mitch said, wishing Wally would shut up.
“How about the part he’s not saying, the part where this Poppa guy sends his goons after us?”
“That being Stax,” Miro said.
“Other goons.” Wally offered Miro the joint, Miro saying no, Wally asking if there were space cakes or something to eat.
“Cheezies above the fridge.” Miro turned to Mitch. “Look, Artie’s an old dude, health is the shits—under the eye of the fucking Task Force. Believe me, the guy’s more interested in playing with his grandkids than taking care of business, but if he does go after anybody, it’ll be Bumpy Rosco.” Miro lit a Newport, saying as Wally searched for Cheezies, “I’m telling you boys, it’s just waiting for us.”
“Yeah, so, let’s get to it.” Coming back in, Wally ripped into the bag, stuffed some in his mouth, offered the bag around. “One thing I want to know,” Wally said to Miro. “How come you hold your cigarette like this?” He held the joint between two fingers. “And you hold a joint like this.” He put three fingers around it, grinning, mouth Cheezie orange.
Miro reached his ringing phone off the coffee table. The display showed it was Stax, Miro switching it off. He didn’t need another asshole to deal with right then.
not a stitch
Karl flipped through the travel brochure, stepping from the display rack to the counter. Photos showing a coral sea and a white strand with palms swaying had him thinking of a week in Costa Rica, feeding white-faced monkeys from a skiff, horseback riding along the dunes, making love to PJ on a moonlit beach. He held the image of her coming toward him barefoot in the sand in a two-piece or something lighter. The voice interrupted his thoughts.
The blonde behind the counter was asking if she could help, eyes smiling at him, watching him close the brochure and hold it over the envelope, the papers he was there to serve, a bouquet tucked under his arm. Bob and Joyce at Sea-to-Sky gave up trying to nail this guy Melnick, and it landed in his in-basket. Holding up the flowers, Karl smiled at her. The nameplate said she was Helen Jackson. Nobody needed to tell him she was a knockout.
Helen’s eyes lit up at the sight of the roses. She said, “Mr. Melnick doesn’t come in on Mondays, but I can sign . . .”
“They’re not for him, they’re for you.” Karl turned on what Jerry his ex used to call his Clooney.
Her painted mouth formed a perfect O.
“Yeah, I’m told yellow’s for friendship, and I’m hoping that’s where we’re headed.” Handing them to her, he set his elbows on the counter, wondering how much the rock on her finger set some guy back.
She thanked him, eyes playing over the blooms, making like it wasn’t every day Giovanni Casanova breezed through her door.
“I’m Karl, with a K.”
“Helen,” she said, Karl thinking, with a double D. She pointed an acrylic nail at the brochure. “And I’m guessing this isn’t about booking the trip of a lifetime.”
“It could happen, but right now I’m just asking if Marv Melnick is behind that door.”
“I already told you . . .”
“I know, he doesn’t come in on Mondays, or he wants you to say that.”
“I don’t lie for Marvin, Karl with a K.” She was playing, putting her nose into the flowers, looking at him over the petals, guessing Karl’s game. “Wish I could help.”
Karl produced a roll of bills and ironed one flat on the counter. Helen’s eyes drifted to it.
“Just want to hand him this.” Karl held up the envelope, not hiding anything.
“He going to want it?” She walked her fingers over the bil
l.
“Not likely, but either way. I’m going to serve him.”
“There were a couple others, came with an envelope,” she said, remembering Bob and Joyce, the envelope marked Personal and Confidential. “I guess it’s the same one.”
“It is.”
“Only you seem pretty sure of yourself. Kind of cocky.”
“They send me when the others come back still holding it. See, I don’t take no for an answer.”
“That makes you Special K.”
“It’s how I do it. See, I like to give the guy the option of taking it the easy way. No running, no hiding, no need to be embarrassed when I serve him at his place of worship, or while he’s putting the eighteenth hole or sitting over his Cornflakes with the wife and kids. But like I said, either way.”
The bill disappeared below the counter, and she said, “So long as Marv won’t find out.”
“My lips are sealed.” Again with the Clooney. Karl peeled off another bill, setting it down, keeping a finger on it this time, asking if she could point him in the right direction.
“Like I told you, Marv never does Mondays and he doesn’t play golf.” Her fingers walked over his, the nails like high heels, the big rock catching the light.
“Yeah, that narrows it down,” Karl said. “But what does Marv do when he’s not golfing on Mondays?”
“He likes to watch,” she said, smiling, batting her eyes, letting him roll that around.
Karl’s finger stayed on the bill, his eyes on hers, waiting.
“You know the Paramount?”
Karl shook his head.
“So-called gents’ club in New West where the raincoaters go for a lap dance—girls from all four corners.”
Karl got the picture.
“Marv’s partial to the Platinum Room; he likes a nice air dance while he’s chewing his clubhouse, getting a little girlfriend action from a redhead named Sinnamon. Spells it with an S.”
Karl guessed Helen’s last job involved a G-string and a pole, back before she started answering Marv’s phones, maybe before the rock on her finger. “He there now?”
“Why don’t you go find out?” She pinched the bill from between his fingers. “Same time every week, when the missus visits her daddy in Westside.”
“That’s a nursing home, huh?”
“You bet.”
That second twenty got Karl the color and plate number of Melnick’s Beemer. It also got him Helen’s home number scratched on the back of the brochure. Before PJ came on the scene, those dark eyes and double Ds would have kept him up nights.
He pocketed the brochure, thinking Bob and Joyce will love this, seeing it going down like this: Karl sneaking up on Melnick under the mirror ball, the Spice Girl doing her thing in his lap, Melnick telling him to go fuck himself, putting on the big man. Karl apologizing, saying he could see Marvin was busy, saying he’d just pop over to the nursing home and hand it to the missus instead. Melnick chasing after him, pleading for the envelope.
the brouhaha
Miro and Wally argued most of the way to Horseshoe Bay, Mitch thinking who gives a shit whether Jack Daniel’s is a bourbon. He was on the Sunny D these days.
The argument shifted to which lane would get them onto the ferry faster. Mitch tuned them out; the important thing, they were doing it. Miro and Wally up in the front seats of the big Chevy van, puffing away on weed and Newports, Mitch in the back, holding his stomach, wondering what asshole designed this thing with the tinted windows that wouldn’t open. He thought about the key he took from Artie Poppa’s, wondering if it opened his safe.
A sedan pulled up next to them, the passenger with her hair in a pixie cut like Ginny’s, bangs down in her eyes. It got Mitch wondering if she stopped in at Lethbridge Correctional from time to time to see Tolley on the other side of a partition, pretty sure she’d have to be a legal spouse for a conjugal visit.
They stayed in the van on the ferry ride over, the first sunny day in a week, nobody interested in catching the sights of Howe Sound, the island in the distance, the snow-capped mountains to the north.
Miro went from bourbon to faster lanes to bragging how he got the THC up to the point of creating his own super-strain, declaring he was to B.C. bud what Owsley Stanley was to white lightning, Wally asking if this Owl guy was a Native.
Snug Cove was coming up, looking more like another Shitstain than a weekend destination. A long line of cars waited to get on the ferry at the other end, packed with kids and dogs, topped with kayaks and coolers, some pulling campers, all smogging up the cove.
“Emerald Isle my ass,” Mitch said as they drove off the ferry, passing the welcome sign.
Wally looked at him in the rearview, grinning, turning on Miller, rolling past a shop with a sign that said Pottery and Crap.
“Who told you to turn on Miller?” Miro asked, telling him to swing around and get back on Grafton.
“Ja wohl, Merle,” Wally said, angling the rearview, adjusted his do-rag, turning the van around, asking Mitch, “You feel the turds coming yet, buddy?”
Mitch told him to get stuffed, adding, “You know that thing on your head looks like it belongs to Lucy’s friend Ethel.”
Miro laughed until he was coughing, saying that was a good one. Wally reached under the visor for a joint and stuck it in his mouth, saying he needed to get his game on, pressing in the lighter, pointing out the RCMP detachment as they passed it.
“Not to worry,” Miro said. “The island squad’s a bunch of Dudley Do-Rights. Got their hands full with speeding logging trucks and bear sightings.”
Heading west on Grafton, Miro told Wally to go straight till he got to Adams, reaching for the joint.
After turning onto Sunset, they passed a lone Jeep coming the other way. Once past Josephine Lake they had the road to themselves all the way to the southern tip of the island, pines a hundred feet tall, the odd house here and there.
The place they were looking for was a graying board and batten facade with the blinds drawn—moss growing on the walls and roof. The only sign that anybody came by was an axe buried in a stump, a flower box under the front window that used to contain geraniums until the deer got them. Deer all over the island, eating everything in sight, leaping the six-foot fence behind the shed, the building used for supplies and sleeping quarters. A Pinto wagon that survived countless recalls stood in the tall grass, the front quarter panel rusted through, the door in primer grey, the rear quarter in faded green.
Miro pulled the holstered revolver from under the seat, checked the rounds and strapped it on, telling Wally again to stay with the van and keep his eyes peeled, asking if they needed to go over it one more time. He nicked his head to the ordnance crate holding the RPG-7.
“I got it,” Wally said. “Stick the rocket in, hit the button and whoosh, you got a building lot.”
“Remember the part where you stand away from the van when you go whoosh, or we’re walking back.” Miro nodded to Mitch, and they were gone, leaving Wally drooling over the crate.
They came low among the ferns, brown and dead, the fronds sending up clouds of flies. Along the blind side of the house, they crossed a broken section of fence, each cradling a cylinder of nitrous oxide, the Hefty box, a bag of tools slung over Mitch’s shoulder, the flies swarming, getting in their ears and eyes.
Around the back, Miro tapped the AC line and connected the cylinders via flex hoses, leaving Mitch to swat flies and keep lookout. The grass out back was patchy, tall in spots, bald in others, the color all gone from a kid’s swing set, a tangle of blackberry and rusting paint cans by a potting shed. He thought he caught a glimpse of a whitetail moving like a ghost among the trees, bringing visions of Tolley’s eight-pointer, making him think of Ginny again.
Mitch flicked his tongue the way he did when his nerves started taking over. Deciding which way was up, he took the Ev
irstar gas mask, fastening the strap behind his head, catching a flash of the Chevy van’s chrome through the pines, the very model Uncle Harmon used for hauling his paint cans and ladders between job sites. Pulling the goggles down, he hoped Wally wasn’t smoking more of that shit, thinking of doing something stupid with that warhead.
Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, Wally relit the joint and cursed the morning DJ, telling him to shut the fuck up and play some Sabbath or Zeppelin, “War Pigs” or “The Immigrant Song.” Next time he stole a ride, he’d get one with a CD player, treat himself to something cool like that FedEx guy drove. He checked his Rolex, itching to open the crate.
He picked up Mitch’s Sunny D bottle from behind his seat and unscrewed the blue cap, looking into the liquid, considered the last few swigs. Recapping it, he tossed it on the floor and checked the glovebox for something to eat, thinking he caught a whiff of Sunny’s perfume on his sleeve. Was she up yet, teasing her hair, getting ready for her shift at Chickie’s? Thinking of her in that red thong. Then he was comparing Bruna, decked out in that plaid shirt she had on the first time he saw her, that paw print tat on her thigh.
Unzipping himself, he slumped back in the seat, guessing the boys should be pumping in the gas by now.
Fifteen minutes since he turned the valves full open—time to do it. Pulling a pry bar from the bag, Miro moved to the side door, leaving the cylinders and tools behind. Back in the van, he had told them how he rigged Artie’s front doors with spring-loaded knives and spike rigs, leaving the back doors for coming and going, told them about the narc that kicked in the wrong door that time in Maple Ridge, left him shish-kebabbed to the door, making the world a better place.
The two of them looked like something out of a Japanese sci-fi, the masks giving them bug eyes and long muzzles. Miro flapped his jacket behind the Vaquero, ready to go Wild West in case Loop and Pinkie weren’t out on the floor with stupid grins.
Ride the Lightning Page 12
