The Man Offside

by A. W. Gray

  “And then, it was the goddamnedest thing,” I said. “All it took was for Donna to marry Jack and whammo: all of a sudden I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Jesus, it was like dope. I used to wake up in a cold sweat just thinking about her. You ever had a woman affect you that way?”

  Breaux’s lip curled in the darkness in a kind of leer. “Not lately. I look like Dear Abby or somebody?”

  “No, but right now you’re the next best thing. Look, you’re asking about the feds, I’m trying to explain what’s going on,” I said.

  “So explain.” He gestured toward the apartment house. “But this dude you’re looking for is liable to move or die of old age before you get through. Jesus Christ.”

  “I’m hurrying. One night after football practice Jack had a press conference. He was a big star and all, he had ‘em all the time. Donna was hanging around and she said—and I swear at the time I didn’t know she wasn’t telling Jack about this—she said since he was going to be busy, why didn’t the two of us eat supper together? One thing led to another, you know. I saw her quite a bit after that, when he wasn’t around. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not exactly ashamed, either.”

  “Brendy know you were fucking her?” Breaux said.

  “I think he did. He never caught us at it or anything, but I’m pretty sure he knew. You can tell when two people are . . . Anyway, I got traded soon after that, and I never saw Donna or Jack again until, well, the other day. When he got arrested was when Donna got ahold of me. His lawyer hired me to get rid of Skeezix, and that’s when I came looking for you.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I was with her one more time, that night after I let you off at Cafe Dallas. I shouldn’t have done it and neither should she. The FBI had a man on her tail, snapping pictures. So now Jack is dead, they’ve got me with his wife, and you know how the bastards work. They want me to finger Jack’s drug connection, or they’re going to have the state boys charge me and Donna both with killing Jack. Murder for hire, that’s the death penalty. Jesus, I don’t even know who Jack’s drug connect is, but they don’t give a shit. They want me to finger somebody, anybody. So I’ve got one chance. If I can get the folks that murdered Jack, the federal folks won’t have anything to pressure me with. So far I’ve been to Muhammed Double-X and he’s put me onto this Catfish guy that lives in this apartment. His girlfriend, or at least she was, she’s not too in love with Catfish anymore. She works at the Bullrider Danceland, and that’s what I was doing out there. She told me where the guy lives, or at least where he did. For all I know he’s moved.”

  Breaux scratched the stubble on his jaw. “Didn’t you think it was funny, them wanting you to get rid of Skeezix?”

  “How’s that?”

  “Just funny. Face it, you ain’t no torpedo. You chase bond skips, collect for bookmakers, shit like that. The fuck you know about running fedral witnesses off?”

  “I just don’t think they knew anybody else.”

  “Shit. You don’t—” Breaux halted in mid-sentence. He opened his door and started to climb out of the Jeep. “So come on, let’s go see the guy, if he’s here. This ain’t none of my business anyhow. I don’t even know what I’m doing over here.”

  The door to the apartment was painted bright yellow, as though Catfish was saying, Here I am, come and get me. I was conscious of Breaux’s soft breathing beside me as I rang the doorbell. Then I leaned against the jamb, watched a girl with sopping long dark hair, wearing a black one-piece swimsuit, clamber out of the pool and leave a trail of wet footprints along the bank as she went over to a beach table. She grabbed a towel and massaged her hair as she slipped into fuzzy pink sandals. Then she put on a yellow terrycloth robe, slung the towel over her shoulder, and walked away. I still hadn’t heard any movement inside the apartment. I rang the bell again. We waited a few minutes more.

  Finally Breaux said, “Well, maybe he’s in the shitter.” He reached past me, turned the knob. There was a soft click and the door swung inward, whispering over carpet. A gaslight was directly across the walk behind us, and it threw a flickering rectangle of light on green shag. Beyond the rectangle was only blackness. I pictured Catfish in there, crouched in the dark behind a table or chair with an Uzi trained on the doorway; if this boy had killed Jack, he was going to be jumpy as hell. I groped instinctively for my back pocket, then pictured the Smith & Wesson still resting on the ‘Vette’s floorboard at Bullrider Danceland, and relaxed. I nudged Breaux, placed a silencing finger to my lips, and pointed at the butt of the .45 jammed inside his waistband. He held the gun in both hands, barrel up commando style, as I said loudly, “Anybody home?” There was no answer, only the gentle lapping of the water in the pool. Breaux and I went into the apartment.

  There was a dim glow ten feet to my left; I turned toward it. A lighted fish tank sat on a table, bubbles rising to the top in rapid succession and green imitation ferns waving gently. Yellow, inch-long piranahs darted among the ferns, whipped down to the bottom to wriggle and twist on white gravel. The light from the tank illuminated a four-seater cloth divan and two cloth stuffed chairs. There was a tall, shaded floor lamp beside the couch. Breaux went over and switched it on. I closed the outside door.

  Catfish wasn’t into decorating: the couch and chairs, along with the cheap dinette set in the alcove off the living room, were standard rental furniture. Aside from the fish tank there were no other knickknacks in the room. A portable fifteen-inch TV sat on a folding card table just inside the doorway. There was one picture on the wall, and it wasn’t framed. Taped to the treated sheetrock was a photo of Old Sparky, the electric chair they’d used down in Huntsville before lethal injection was voted in, and I pictured Catfish sitting here with Old Sparky’s picture and feeling right at home. There was a short hallway leading off the living room with a closed door at the opposite end.

  We walked side by side down the hall, Breaux still holding the .45, and went into the bedroom. I fumbled with the light switch and turned it on.

  Now, this was quite a setup. There was a fairly normal king-size bed covered with a fairly normal green quilted spread. There was a chair beside the bed. On the chair were stonewashed jeans, freshly laundered and pressed, and an equally fresh blue western shirt. Polished brown western boots sat on the floor. The clothes were laid carefully across the seat and chair back as though someone had been planning to go out. The bed and chair were normal-looking, okay, but the apparatus sitting beside them was anything but.

  I guessed that the thing was a torture rack. It was about three feet high and seven feet long, its top a padded cloth surface with foot stirrups at one end and a headrest at the other. Chains with locking bracelets attached were affixed to all four corners, and the top of the whatchamacallit was divided into two sections. There was a gear-toothed wheel underneath the center with a crank attached. By turning the crank one could make the top grow longer. Two brown leather quirts hung from a plaque on the wall behind the thing. Jesus, no wonder Candy had had enough.

  Bodie gave a low, breathy whistle as he bent to turn the crank a couple of notches. There was a sharp click-click and the top lengthened three or four inches. I went over and leaned against a squat dresser of dark wood while Breaux crouched and looked the rack over from all angles. As I watched him I was dimly conscious of the splash-hiss of running water. I turned my attention away from Breaux and looked around.

  I’d been concentrating so hard on the torture rack that the noise of the shower simply hadn’t penetrated. On the other side of the bed, the bathroom door was partway open. Beyond the doorway were tiny green square tiles, both on the floor and on the walls. Hazy steam was coating the tiles with droplets of water. I touched Bodie’s shoulder and jerked my head toward the bathroom. He rose. I led him around the foot of the bed and into the bathroom, then stopped in my tracks. Breaux grunted softly as he collided with me.

  The guy Catfish—at least I assumed it was Catfish, and a closer inspection of the receding chin and drooping mustache convinced me
that he looked sort of like a catfish—had been a weightlifter. His arms were big and muscular and his pectorals taut and hard. At least the right pectoral was; there was a gaping bullet wound through the left, over the heart. It was one of several bullet holes in Catfish. I didn’t bother to count them.

  The shower door was scattered about in jagged pieces of frosted glass. Catfish was on his back; his feet and shins were inside the stall. I guessed that the slugs had blasted away the top half of the door, and in tumbling outward Catfish had done the rest of the damage. His black eyes were wide and staring at the ceiling, his wet black hair drying and frizzing. It occurred to me that the force of the bullets should have thrown the body against the back shower wall; Catfish would have had to force himself, shot full of holes, out the door for one last, death-rattle lunge at the shooter. Mr. Catfish had been a plenty tough customer, and whoever had offed him had known that. That accounted for the extra bullet holes.

  I stepped over Catfish and looked inside the shower stall. Several tiles were cracked; shards of green porcelain lay on the floor mixed with the broken glass. A misshapen gray lead pellet rested on the grating over the drain. Currents of dark red mixed with steamy water and swirled downward. Some of the blood was thickening and sticking to the walls.

  Breaux said, “Guess he musta twisted that crank out there too hard on somebody. Pissed ‘em off, huh?”

  The steam was dampening my shirt, and I wiped my hand across my chest. “You ever seen this guy, Bodie?”

  “Naw. Not nekked, anyhow. Let’s split.”

  I hesitated. I wasn’t too crazy about hanging around a dead man’s apartment, particularly this dead man’s. I thought about Pierson, the county D.A., and what he’d said about getting a grand jury together. “I want to look around a couple of minutes. Just a couple, okay?” I said.

  Breaux wiped the bill of his cap, where moisture was beginning to collect. “Well, this cat here ain’t going to stop you. Get a move on. Jails I don’t like.”

  We went back into the bedroom with Breaux carrying the .45 loosely by his hip. I skirted the king-size, dodged around the torture rack, and returned to the dresser. There was a handkerchief in my back pocket. I wrapped it around the handle of the top dresser drawer and pulled. The drawer creaked slightly as it opened. I peered down inside.

  Atop a stack of folded silk handkerchiefs—they were bright reds, greens, and purples, and I briefly wondered whether Catfish had known Fred Cassel—was a pair of steel handcuffs. There were flecks of rust on the bracelets. To the left of the hankies was something round and about a foot long, rolled up in linen. I picked it up and unwrapped it. I was holding a hard rubber imitation penis. It was quite a molding job; the thing looked real. I dropped it like a hot poker. The penis fell to the floor, bounced once, and rolled over. There were very real-looking black hairs sprouting from its upper end. Breaux’s breathing quickened beside me and I resisted the impulse to giggle.

  Breaux said, “Jesus Christ.”

  “That’s what I say,” I said. I looked back into the drawer.

  A stack of five-by-eight color photos had been hidden behind the rolled-up dildo. The stack looked to be an inch-and-a-half high, maybe two dozen pictures. Slowly, carefully, using my own handkerchief to prevent any prints, I lifted the photos and laid them on top of the dresser. I bent my head to look. Breaux did the same, and his shoulder rubbed mine.

  The top photo featured Candy, stark naked. She was on all fours on the torture rack. Her wrists were cuffed to the lower end. Catfish was in the picture, too, and I thought he looked a whole lot better as a corpse than when he’d been alive and walking around. In the photo he had a mean-looking grin on his face. He was behind Candy on his knees, and was naked also. There was a look of fear mixed with pain on Candy as Catfish plunged the dildo—I glanced at the thing on the floor and swallowed bile—deep into her from the rear.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Breaux said.

  “You sound like a broken record,” I said. Still using the handkerchief, I nudged the top photo aside and looked at the next one.

  My first impression was that the second picture was more to my taste. A tawny blonde was on the king-size bed in this one: supple, muscular legs, a flat belly, jutting, pink-tipped breasts. She was kneeling beside a prone naked man, and she was smiling wanton lust into the camera. Her lips were parted and she was holding the man’s erect member between her palms. I looked at the girl for a second or two before it dawned on me that I’d seen her before. On a lit porch in nighttime with waves lapping against the shore in the background. Connie Swarm.

  “It’s your friend, Bodie,” I said.

  “Yeah. Old Connie-girl. Can ya imagine?”

  “Sure is. She’s—”

  Whatever I’d been about to say stuck in my throat like a fish bone. I’d barely glanced at the man in the picture, Connie being the main attraction, but realization flooded over me as I looked at the man closer. Head back, eyes closed, a look on his face as though he was about to enter the gates of heaven. Which he finally had, just a few days ago. The guy was Jack Brendy.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said.

  “That’s my line,” Breaux said.

  I kept staring at the picture and felt a whole lot less guilty about what had gone on between Donna and me. I even managed to get mad at Jack—I was rationalizing, of course—as I nudged the photo off the stack and looked at the next one.

  Jack and Connie again, coupled this time, Connie on top watching the camera, her pink tongue caressing her lower lip. Stage presence, probably the same expression she wore when her act at Baby Doll’s reached a frenzied pitch. In this picture, Jack’s eyes were open, his gaze directed at the ceiling, his lips parted in the early throes of climax. There was something about the way Jack looked that caused my eyebrows to knit. I reached for the other picture of him with Connie, laid the photos side by side, and compared.

  I was pretty sure that I was right. Connie was playing for the camera, but Jack didn’t even know that anybody was taking his picture. If Jack hadn’t been Jack, had been a regular porno actor, then I probably would have felt differently. But no way could Jack Brendy strip down in front of a camera and play this scene so naturally. I left Breaux gaping at the pictures and made a circle around the room, checking out every foot of the walls and doors.

  I found what I was looking for in a walk-in closet on the far side of the bedroom, directly opposite the bath where Catfish lay. The double closet doors were painted dark brown, the identical color to the walls inside the closet, perfect camouflage for the slit in one of the doors. The slit was about six inches wide by four inches high. I used my hanky to shut the doors behind me and squinted out through the opening. The back of one of Breaux’s thick, blue-jeaned legs was visible—he was still ogling the pictures as though hypnotized—and beyond that the bed, at an identical angle to the scene in the photos.

  So Jack had thought he was scoring for real. Blackmail? Seemed likely. But for money or what? Whoever was behind this—I somehow couldn’t picture Catfish as the brains of the operation—would have to have known that Jack was into smuggling drugs. Hell, they wouldn’t need a picture of him as he was banging Connie Swarm to extort money. Didn’t make sense. And what was Connie getting out of it? Her track record didn’t seem to go with this scene, at least from what I knew about her. Connie had too many sugar daddies for her to have to sink to this kind of action for money. I decided to pick Bodie’s brain, at least the portion of it where information about Connie Swarm was stored.

  I left the closet and started across the room. “Bodie, I need to know—”

  A uniformed Dallas cop sprang into the bedroom and said, “Don’t even breathe, assholes.” He held his service .38 revolver in both hands, the barrel aligned with the bridge of his nose and aimed at a point somewhere between me and Breaux. The cop was a young guy, still with some baby fat puffing his cheeks. The bill of his cap was practically touching his nose. I stopped dead in my tracks and Breaux half turned in the
cop’s direction.

  The cop moved warily, his gaze on us, moved around beside the bathroom door. He turned his head away long enough to peer inside, then said to us, “On the floor, facedown. Now. You, sea salt. Lay the pistol down easy.”

  I lay facedown on the carpet, the shag tickling my cheek. Breaux gingerly laid the .45 on the floor, then spread-eagled out beside me.

  “Sea salt, my ass,” Breaux mumbled.

  10

  The routine hadn’t changed any. I followed the city jail guard down a steel-walled corridor between rows of cells with little rectangular windows in the doors and wondered where they were keeping Breaux. More than likely he was playing an identical scene, following another guard down another corridor in the jail to talk to a detective who had the same questions for him. I wasn’t likely to see Bodie again until they felt they had all the information they were going to get. Keep the suspects separated, don’t give them a chance to compare stories. I had to admit that the method usually worked, but I doubted if they were prepared for a couple of suspects like me and Bodie Breaux. We’d been through it before.

  Unlike the modern Lew Sterrett Justice Center, the county lockup, the city jail was steel doors and tiny, dark cells, with bigger tanks for gangs of drunks who were sleeping it off. A good old-fashioned kind of jail. My guard was an older man with fat pouches jiggling underneath his shirt and sticking out over the back of his gray uniform trousers. I kept my gaze riveted on the small of his back as I followed him along. My feet were in soft jailhouse slippers, and the concrete floor hurt the soles like the dickens. The one-piece blue jumpsuit I was wearing was too small and constricted the movement of my shoulders.