Trust Me
Page 41
Crossing the road, Chendrill and Daltrey followed. Chendrill in his Hawaiian, Daltrey in her big boots and jeans. Both of them standing out more like cops than ever in this world, where the sick and the helpless lived and read the streets better than they ever could. The Italian reached the end of the block and stood there with his hands against the wall and his head down, breathing hard as the sweat ran into his eyes.
He called out, “Okay, Suzy—let’s go.”
But Suzy wasn’t listening. He tried again—this time calling to a woman standing next to him with her boyfriend in the bright Hawaiian shirt who wasn’t listening either. Sinking down, he dropped to the ground as the pain in his leg overtook his stability and he sat for a moment, then he dropped further and laid down with his back on the sidewalk. His head resting on the ground in amongst the needles, dried puke, and piss. His eyes looking up and seeing nothing—only shapes and streaks of light as his head spun from the poison that flowed through his veins.
*************
It was around the same time that Big Carl the tow truck driver felt the poison run through his veins also. Except his poison was not actual or physical—this was the poison of pure fear, that toxic combination of cortisol and adrenaline constricting blood flow and stopping his breath. The source of his fear were the others who shared the tight space within the remand center he could now call home—for a while at least. These men who were far more vile and nastier than him. Men large and small, who’d spent so much of their lives so far in one cage or another that their tough look wasn’t a look at all, it was just what they were and needed to be to survive in their world. These were institutionalized men, who had grown up in a system they no longer feared because most had long ago accepted it as part of who they were—they were it and it was them.
Not like the wannabe gangster who sat with them now, out of his comfort zone and on the verge of tears, a man who’d spent his life driving a tow rig pretending to be the same.
It was just after eight the following morning when Suzy’s husband opened his eyes as he waited in his cell for a lawyer that he hoped his wife would spring for. The cell now suddenly full of men who wanted to know why he was there and wearing women’s flip flops. The leader of the group, being the biggest native Indian Suzy’s husband had ever seen, was the one with the questions.
First, he asked if he was comfortable, then as Suzy’s husband nodded back, he said, “Good, that’s important, you see we like our new friends here to be comfortable.”
The husband who liked to watch his wife get fucked in the ass sitting there still nodding and looking at the man’s size and looking at the pink plastic flip flops on his feet. The big guy watching as he did and asking why he was there.
Suzy’s husband telling him, “I crossed the border.”
“Oh, wow you’re that guy? Great, you’re the guy who’s been bringing terrorists into our country?”
The husband took a deep breath. They weren’t wrong but he didn’t know who was in the van. He was just the guy behind the wheel. They needed to know that. He said, “Yeah, I understand you think that, but I was just the guy who drives—you know, not the guy who arranges it all.”
Then the big guy said, “You eating the food here, though aren’t you? You know, you’re here and you’re a Canuck and that’s cool, but you’re still eating American food?”
Oh, so that’s what it was Suzy’s husband thought, they wanted a tax, they wanted his food for the short time he was going to be there on remand, before his wife or the guy who owned the tunnel sent a lawyer over and fixed it. He said, “I’ve no need for that, there’s water. You take my food or some, you know, I’m cool.”
The big Indian who ran the place then said, “What is it you’re offering? All or some I’m confused.”
“I mean take it all, you can have it all.”
“Cool,” the Indian said with a smile. But it wasn’t over, not by a long shot. He said, “What you got for my friends then?”
That was it, Suzy’s husband thought, he didn’t have anything else to trade. He said, “I can ask the wife to bring some smokes if you want.”
“Sure, that’s great.”
Then the big Indian asked, “You like dogs?”
It was a loaded question and one even the husband’s small brain, which was running at full alert, could pick up on. “Yeah, I like dogs.” Suzy’s husband nodded as he replied, then said it again, “Yeah I like dogs.”
“Big dogs, you like big dogs?”
“Yeah I like big dogs sure.”
“You like little dogs?”
“Yeah I like little dogs.”
“Why did you have the little dog killed then?”
Fuck me, this wasn’t good. How the fuck could this big fucker have heard about this? Suzy’s husband thought. Feeling his stomach rise up into his chest, he said, “You referring to the dog that the guy who was fucking my wife had?”
The big Indian smiled, then said, “Yeah.”
“That wasn’t me,” Suzy’s husband replied as he looked around the cramped cell for a safe passage that was never going to appear. He said, “That was not me, it was my boys. They got carried away that’s all.”
“That’s all?” asked the big Indian.
“Yeah, you know, kids are like that.”
“Yeah,” said the big Indian who’d known Chendrill from when he was a kid and lived on the reserve in Canada and went to the same school. He said, “Sounds like bad parenting.”
Suzy’s husband jumped on this one, throwing his wife under the bus straight away, saying, “Yeah, their mother, she’s been a bad woman you know. Out all the time, at the club while I worked—you know.”
“Worked doing what—bringing terrorists into our country?”
“No, at the docks.”
“Oh,” then the big Native Indian said, “You like gay people?”
He did, yeah—he was liberal, he had gay friends, one had just bought him a house to live in, explained the stripper’s husband as he nodded. Then he heard the big Native Indian standing there with all his friends say, “My friend Bash here, he’s gay you see, and I heard you beat one up, hit him in the head with a baseball bat and fucked him all up?”
Suzy’s husband took another big breath and swallowed. How the fuck did these guys dressed in orange overalls know what had been going down up in Vancouver? He said, “That wasn’t me, no.”
"Your kids?”
“Maybe?”
“Your wife again?”
“Yeah.”
“Bitch, eh?”
“Yeah.”
Then the big Native Indian said, “You like that Clive Sonic guy?”
Suzy’s husband didn’t like him no, in fact he hated the guy, hated his song Bam Bam Love or whatever the hell it was called and he hated seeing pictures of the guy all over town telling him he was going to make changes for good and other stupid shit. He said, “Yeah I like him; he’s good.”
The big Native Indian saying, “What’s that saying he’s got—that slogan?”
“Trust Me.”
“Yeah that’s it—you trust me, do you?”
“Yeah.”
“You trust him, this politician singer guy Clive Sonic as well?”
Suzy’s husband nodded.
Then the big man asked, “You trust him enough to let him fuck your wife in the ass?”
Suzy’s husband stared at the big man with his mouth open—which was now bone dry. He asked, “Why would you say that?”
“Because, I heard through the grapevine you like anal sex.”
Suzy’s husband stayed quiet, he looked at the group and then to the door. Then back to the big Indian with the questions. Then heard the guy say, “You’ve got little feet, I like your shoes.”
Suzy’s husband stared at his feet in the flip flops with the little flowers on the straps and saw that his toenails needed cutting.
“Thanks, it’s all the warden here said they had, so I got lumbered.”
“No, I heard they were a gift from some guy who wears those fancy shirts and drove the truck for that guy whose dog you killed. They say the guy had a courier company deliver them special, just for you.”
Suzy’s husband felt his stomach turn as he looked to the flip flops and put two and two together and came up with Chendrill. The big fucker who’d thrown him through the window for no reason—now the guy was setting him up with an even bigger fucker. Then he heard the big Native Indian say, “My friends like guys with little feet, you know what they say about guys with little feet?”
He did, he’d heard the same joke all his life ever since he’d reached adulthood and his hadn’t grown as they should have. He said, “No.”
“Oh,” said the big Native Indian, then carried on with, “they say guys with little feet like anal sex.”
Suzy’s husband smiled, that was one he hadn’t heard before. He shook his head and said as he tried to make it a joke, “Yeah giving it is good—you know, to girls.”
“To your wife?”
Suzy’s husband smiled and nodded then said, “Yeah, she likes it.”
“Oh? I heard you like it too?”
“Yeah, I like it too—you know, giving it.”
“How about watching, you like that too do you, you get turned on watching a group of guys ploughing down your lady’s alley?”
Suzy’s husband stayed quiet—there seemed nowhere he could go and nothing he could say to change the subject. Then he heard the big Native Indian say, “Well you know, funny thing is, you and I got a lot in common, because I like to watch too. But in this world, there’s one thing I know and it’s that you can’t have everything you want. You can’t be one sided on these things in here, not if we’re all going to be friends.”
Then with a smile that lit up the room, the big Native Indian said, “Especially with you wearing them sexy shoes like you are, I think we’re all going to get to know each other real well—Trust Me.”
The End
With many thanks to Justin Gouin.
Paul Slatter grew up in London, England and now lives in both Canada and Thailand.
He is married and has four children.