The Shaft

by David J. Schow

  The Garrison Street door was hopeless - locked, iced, impassable. He slogged around to the Kenilworth door, where he found the glass blown inward. Apparently a fist of wind had sheared in, angled deadly, and done the deed. Broken stalactites, fallen from the roof ledge, poked from the dune of snow like some Viet Cong booby trap. He crouched and stepped through the toothy ingress. In his wake big arrowheads of glass jarred free and made no noise as they were gulped by the snow.

  The foyer was another sub-zero mess, tracked up, besotted and half-frozen. How could tenants stand this? It wasn't something you ignored by stuffing a towel into a door crack. He pushed through the hallway door and made for the stairs, hands deeply interred in pockets, snow sliding off him like the world's most overstated Head and Shoulders ad.

  Perhaps Bash's match had been lit by Jonathan's outrageous tale of arrest and hookers and TV drama jeopardy. People with normal, safe, Butt lives never savored this brand of thrill. You had to taste life… and sometimes the taste was really icky. Better to fall in love and have your heart broken, than never to experience it. Some of life's icky flavors demanded mental mouthwash. Some changed the way you did things forever. Jonathan had been hit by a fast, color-saturated sideswipe of excitement in the middle of this colorless void. Bash, snug and secure at home, not to mention bored, had missed out while he was programming ways to insure his life would be even more comfy and dangerless.

  He hated it whenever he could feel the grind and shift of his character changing shape. His excuse for coming here on this fine, hellish day was to review things with Jonathan and see if they were still watertight. What he really wanted Jonathan to do was talk him out of it… just hit the road for Vegas… become smugglers or astronauts…

  The outer door to 207 moved when Bash tapped on it. It was unlocked, and he stepped through. Door Number Two was also ajar.

  'Jonathan. Hey?'

  Inside, movement. Heavy tread, crossing to the door just as Bash pushed it back with gloved fingertips. Then the door was wrested from him, leaping wide open.

  'Shut your fuckun hole.'

  Not Jonathan. Someone as tall as Bash, with wider shoulders. Gripping a big-frame automatic whose muzzle sniffed Bash's eyebrows.

  'Ass in here. Now. Total quiet or I blow your teeth out through your hairdo. Step in now.'

  Bash was relieved not to see Jonathan's bullet-riddled corpse in a loose-limbed sprawl on the floor. The big man closed and locked the inner door. Bash swallowed hard. Jonathan's stuff was unboxed and strewn with no regard to order or fragility.

  Bash wondered how many hits he could take before his body went and died on him.

  'Back against the wall and slide down to a sitting position. Do it now.' The gun indicated directions.

  Bash did as he was told.

  In less than forty seconds he would be grappling with this intruder, fighting for his life.

  ***

  The most apt image Jamaica could summon was an alarm clock. The old kind, tinny and moon-faced. The kind of clock terrorists employ in shoot-em-up movies to touch off their death packets of plastique. The clock was ticking. Detonation was afoot and the race was on.

  Her life was a time bomb.

  One more crossed-off square on the calendar march toward the end of life. A wildly blowing blizzard and one more stolen automobile. A new glorious day.

  She nudged Bauhaus' cherry-red Corvette into the breakdown lane with emergency flashers blinking. Up ahead she could make out the taillights of another hapless commuter snared to immobility by the storm and a sense of shared catastrophe composed her a bit. Her teeth were chattering in spite of the artificial heat flooding her legs. The gas gauge hung at a quarter tank. How long before she was running on fumes? How much more of this cliffhanger crap could she weather before steam came pouring out her ears?

  She crunched to a halt in two feet of new snow and put the ’Vette in park. She could see no other vehicles, other than the lost soul up ahead. High beam blinkers came and went like ghosts in the swirls of white. Lights up high would mean plows or tractors. Lights on her level would mean other victims. Like her. Maybe the authorities. Jamaica hated that word, authorities.

  The down-time permitted her to rummage in Bauhaus' glovebox. Beneath an ungainly stack of CDs and half a lid of makings for stale reefer she found his dented flask. Her fingers traced the light Deco engraving, and her nose told her it was bourbon, eighty proof.

  Under the flask she found a revolver. Just what she needed in her life - another gun. Hallelujah.

  Jammed endwise against the floorboard on the passenger side was Emilio's Haliburton case, filled end-to-end with money. On the suicide seat was her saddlebag and Officer Stallis' stolen service pistol. It had been fired until empty sometime in the last hour.

  The piece she withdrew from the glovebox was a compact, pimpish revolver, snub-nosed and nickle-plated, pure Bauhaus. Perhaps he kept it for plugging traffic cops.

  The storm did its damndest to ice the tinted windows and keep the car enshrouded in white - blank, featureless, the color of picked bones. Jamaica caught herself glazing out, staring at the dashboard clock. It was the ticking kind. So many events, crammed into a handful of revolutions on such a tiny clock face. It didn't seem do-able.

  She smacked herself lightly on one cheek to revive. The heat was making her dopey. She got out of the car to let the snow sting her, and, eyes tearing against the gale force winds, she threw both guns into the blizzard as far as her pitching arm could propel them.

  Emilio had been a cinch. Literally.

  He is so brimmed over with ego that stacking the sexual deck against him hardly requires a caloric expenditure. She does not fuck him per se - she processes him, on the same mental level she blinks or respirates.

  In the aberration department, he has nothing new to offer her. Adroitly she simulates the requisite climax. Emilio is one of those who fancies himself a 'giving' creature because he always forces his bedmate to come first.

  When they both doze, Jamaica makes sure she is on top. Bauhaus' downers, nicked from the fruit salad dish on the onyx bartop, help.

  Almost by rote she handcuffs and hogties him, resisting the urge to separate his hairy balls with a bullet. Make 'em dance.

  Or maybe pour amyl nitrate all over them… glue him to the sheets…

  Getting the revolver free of her jacket before Emilio could burrow into her clothing had proven dicey. She never forgets that cameras are watching. No median for theatrical gestures just yet. Everything has to appear business-as-usual, and tying Emilio to the bedposts qualifies. Only just.

  She does not need that much time to act, and plans on moving faster, thinking faster than any of them.

  More kink to come, following this brief bathroom break.

  Once in the john, she uses Arrid Extra Dry to powder the panel where she knows the camera lens to be and hurries into her clothing. After getting her boots on and snugging Officer Stallis' gun into one of the insulated pockets, she fields an unwanted glimpse of herself in the full mirror over the sink. Her mascara is blotchy, her eyes raccoon-rimmed in kohl, her hair sweated out. The purple streak sticks up like something out of a cartoon. Poster child for the runaways of America. Please save me from those mean streets.

  A toot for luck, chopped on the marble counter. For stamina. Bravery, if not courage.

  The moment she steps out of the bathroom, the clock begins its countdown.

  She rolls Emilio's silk socks into a wad and crams them toward the back of his throat. His breath hitches and he begins to draw air through his congested nose, still out.

  She's out the door.

  Chari and Krystal are flat-alpha on the sunken circular sofa, curled into each other like sisters at a slumber party, butts exposed, legs splayed unconsciously. MTV rages away on the video screen. Sedative rock, cliched to snoozeland. Guitar rapists with big hair, throttling their penile fretboards and making faces as though what they are doing is REALLY HARD. The lead man for Guns 'N Roses i
s prancing and shrieking. He has no butt - the backside of his too cool leather pants hangs like an airline bag with two empty pouches.

  Jamaica is thankful for the cover noise.

  Lord Alfred is not in evidence. Probably ass-up in the master bedroom, dripping vaseline. Good.

  The Haliburton case is still on the dining room table, though snapped and locked. Its mellow aluminum shell makes light abstracts on the two inch glass. Outside the blizzard is still fighting to get in, pelting the bulletproof window with BB-sized hail that shatters on impact. The wind lashes like a penitent's scourge.

  Guns 'N Roses stop. Whip Hand starts. 'Maneater.' Now rock'n'rollers trash a school lit in aggressive crimsons.

  She catches the tang of the coca paste cigarette before she actually tracks him, standing behind the bar, his eyes reflecting steely light from the video monitors mounted in the cabinets.

  'Shit.' She draws.

  'Hope you're wearing a napkin,' Bauhaus says calmly. He sees the gun. 'We wouldn't want Emilio's spunk freezing a plug in your butt, dearie.' Probably has his own weapon below the bartop, just out of sight.

  Jamaica pulls the.357 to full cock, hoping that Bauhaus is smogged out on dope and his response time is retarded. She wants him to pull something rash. A provocation that will justify busting him deader than a T-bone steak.

  'I want to see both hands empty and on the bar,' she says, feeling stupid, as though she is playacting. 'Right now. '

  'Mm, quite. So Miami Vice of you.' Pause. 'You ungrateful little skag. You do forget your place. You're supposed to say, 'Or god help me I'll shoot you where you stand.'

  'Yes?'

  'Hands. Now. ' She can't help gesturing with the pistol.

  She senses that Bauhaus is playing it perfectly level because he is about to kill her. When his hands rose, one of them would be packed. By the time she can react she will be stopping a bullet.

  Fuck it, she thinks, snapping her trigger.

  The service revolver jumps like a gator wrenching apart dead prey and a heavy-grain hollowpoint plows through a bottle of Napoleon brandy a foot from Bauhaus' head before taking out the backbar mirror in an explosion of bright silver spears. The noise is spectacular but does not stir the bimbettes snoozing on the sofa.

  Bauhaus flinches hard. Both hands are up. He has actually been startled into dropping his own gun. He wants insults, build-up, a stand-off. At Jamaica 's shot he has tried to whip-draw. The ramp sight of his big automatic has banged against the bar edge and the gun gets away from him, hitting his bare foot. His face scrunches inward while pieces of the bar glass are still flying.

  'Owww, GODDAMNIT!'

  She keeps her gun braced in a two-handed grip. Not only does this look bad to the bone, but it helps her keep the muzzle down. Miracle, she thinks.

  The ebony cigarette holder hangs slackly from his lips. The cigarette has fallen and is smoldering on the deep blue shag.

  'Step out.' She has regained her nerve.

  Bauhaus shuffles sidewise to clear the bar, hands limp at the wrists and crossed before the cleft of his silk lapels, the way a cripple might hold two useless limbs as scant protection. He is not wearing pants, just his smoking jacket, belted loosely over his pendulant tummy. Jamaica sees him wince as splinters of glass pierce the soles of his naked feet. Imagining his blood fires her own resolve.

  His eyes seek the dropped automatic one last time. Jamaica says no sternly and he gets the message.

  His eyes are wet, red, inset. His breaths are fast and shallow. His panicked body is trying to burn off dope with adrenaline. Too slowly. White legs bowed, he stands before the mercy of the.357.

  She tells him to sit on the barstool and cock his legs back around the rail. But for the threat of her pistol she might have been setting him up for some of the usual sex play. Small rivulets of blood pattern the chrome as his feet bleed.

  Nimbly she steps around the bar, bootheels powdering glass bits. She fetches the automatic and pulls two bottles of Quietly beer from the fridge.

  She offers one to Bauhaus. He stares at it, face ruddy with child's guilt. You spoiled my fun. He is hesitant to actually touch the bottle, sensing some ruse or dumb game of vengeance. His penis, flaccid and white as his chicken-skin legs, lolls from a fold in the smoking jacket.

  'Dope's right in front of you,' she says, indicating the party bowls of tablets and capsules. A riot of consciousness-altering color. 'Help yourself. Start with a big handful. '

  His eyes flare. He tries his first gambit. 'Marko will be back here any second.' His tone of warning needs a speck of polish just now.

  'You sent Marko to turn over Jonathan's apartment. That was before Emilio and I hit the sack, right? It's too soon for him to be back and you know it. That asshole enjoys his work. '

  'Just like he's going to enjoy widening your cunt face with a power drill. Emilio will have his bit of fun, too. Your value just dropped to negative numbers. There won't be enough left of you to make a lampshade out of. ' Flecks of foam have collected in the corners of Bauhaus' mouth.

  'Guess I've got nothing to lose, then, by blowing your fucking head off.' She is yelling. She cocks again and gets right in his face.

  Eat, she tells him.

  She knows that in the ratty backwaters of Bauhaus' mind waits the speech of doom, designed to convince this bitch all is lost for her. Her life ends tonight. You'll never breathe in this town again.

  He looks toward Chari and Krystal. Nodoby home. His hand edges toward the pill dish and she knows what he is thinking: buy time.

  So odd a sensation, to know the interior of his head.

  'I said a handful, not a sample. Between these two guns I've got enough shots to make you scream a helluva long time before you get to pass out or die.'

  Ludes, loads, poppers, black cats, percs; Bauhaus is infamous for the freshness of his fruit salad. Gyros, highwires, dexedrine, black beauties, red nightmares, crystal blue persuaders, none of them a niggardly dosage. Skimp for guests? Never. About ten assorted pills are gathered in his palm.

  'Drink me,' she says. 'Cheers.'

  She takes a long pull off her Quietly while Bauhaus chokes down the cornucopia of drugs. Two hard swallows. Something gets lodged and he coughs. Ack ack ack. He washes it all down with beer.

  Jamaica makes him repeat the routine four more times, until the bowl is half empty.

  Keeping him in sight and making sure his legs stayed wrapped around the stool, she hunts up car keys from the cabinet rack. She does not want him to know which of his automobile collection she is stealing. Backstepping, always holding the pistol on him, she collects the Haliburton case from the dining room.

  Bauhaus works on making saliva. He says nothing now.

  She is itching to murder him. Make him eat the gun and watch his brains decorate the picture window, to drip down. If he gets loose he'll make her compost in a second. She will be erased from the earth. To Bauhaus it would be an adjustment in a ledger. He has never related to her as a human being, or even a person for rent. To kill him would be to degrade herself to his level of nonhumanity. She does not want to become a robot that badly. What is good, merciless corporate practice is not necessarily a good bottom line for her life. She would relive killing him every day of her life, and he is not worth that much time inside her head.

  Bauhaus does not rate her rage. This comes as somewhat of a revelation to her.

  She is about to tell him what to do next when he makes his move. He slaps himself hard in the face with his palm. Then he snarls. The snarl becomes a yell; the sound martial artists make when they pop a good workout sweat.

  Bauhaus launches himself from the stool, pounding toward her on bloody feet, his muscles fighting their way to the surface of his flesh, and Jamaica has just enough time to remember that among the dope on the bar, lost in the mix, are probably some ampules of PCP.

  Bauhaus has smashed the ampule right into his face. Pinpoints of glass are jammed into his upper lip.

  His charge is
clumsy and mad, making up in fury what it lacks in grace. His arms are outflung into claws.

  She gets the Haliburton up one-handed and whacks him in the face. Christ but the thing is heavy and all that's inside is paper. Not a good shot, but it has weight behind it. Bauhaus is deflected to execute a spreadeagled headfirst dive into the sunken living room.

  Instead of trying to circumvent him, Jamaica sprints for the first bedroom. The green bedroom. Two doors down, Emilio is still faded to black, touring dreamland and getting angry at everything.

  Bauhaus yowls incoherently, spraying spittle, the veins in his eyes bulging. He gets an arm and a leg through the bedroom door just as she tries to slam and lock it.

  She kicks him in the shin hard enough to lay back flesh and expose bone. He does not feel it.

  His hand clutches blindly for her windpipe and she must drop the Haliburton to hold the door. The door seesaws and he skins his wounded leg free to kick at it. Now Jamaica is making her own kind of growl. She shoulders the door hard and hears two of his fingers break as his hand is hastily withdrawn from the jamb. The bursting knucks sound like a party-popper.

  She reconsiders having to relieve Bauhaus of his life in the next ten seconds or so. She gets the door lock engaged but knows it won't hold.

  The first time Bauhaus rams the door a framed painting jumps from the wall to break frame and glass on the floor. It depicts human skulls in ochre, and is signed in a childish hand by John Wayne Gacy.

  Jamaica grabs the case and runs for the closet. When Bauhaus caves in the door it will take him two or three seconds to track and orient. She is counting on that lag of time to save her bod.

  If the bedroom had been a dead end she would have had to shoot her way to the front door. Breaking windows to sneak free was a joke in this building - all the windows are security-barred, on coded releases. There are even tiny bars on the intake for the industrial heating/cooling unit. Jamaica is not stupid enough to retreat to a dead end just to be cornered by a lunatic lathered out on animal trank. She has ducked into the green bedroom specifically to enter the closet.