Cut Back

by Todd Strasser

  The hearse flew around a tree-lined curve and past several white signs with black writing that Kai couldn’t make out clearly. The next thing they knew, the pavement ended at a tall silver chain-link fence. The hearse shot through the gate. Bean hit the brakes and the hearse skidded, bounced, and rattled to a stop in a rocky, potholed dirt parking lot. Not far away, a flock of seagulls burst into the air, squawking noisily. A large white and gray blob of guano splattered against the hearse’s windshield.

  “Crap,” Bean muttered.

  “Exactly,” said Kai. He looked through the windows. They were in some kind of a garbage dump. Small mountains of garbage bags. Piles of old white kitchen appliances. Neat stacks of logs.

  Clank! At the sound of metal against metal behind them, both Kai and Bean turned and looked out the back window. The tall chain-link gate had swung closed and Goldilocks was wrapping a chain through the posts to keep it that way.

  They’d been made.

  Twenty-six

  “Uh-oh.” Bean swallowed hard and turned to Kai. “What do we do?”

  Kai was still watching Goldilocks through the back window. The guy finished wrapping the chain around the gate and started to walk toward the hearse. Kai reached for the door handle. “We get out. You stay on your side of the hearse and keep your hands low where he can’t see them. Don’t say anything. Just look serious and let me do the talking.”

  “Jesus, Kai, what if he has a gun or something? What if he’s gonna kill us and leave us in the dump?” Bean asked with uncharacteristic nervousness.

  “Just be cool,” Kai said, and got out.

  The sun was blistering. Now that they were inland from the ocean it seemed twenty degrees hotter. The intense rays scalded the top of Kai’s head. Every single piece of silver and chrome in the dump glistened and shimmered. The mixed scents of hot rubber and rotting garbage hung in the still air, and heat mirages made everything in the distance ripple. Goldilocks stopped about twenty feet away. He was wearing a white T-shirt tucked into khaki cargo shorts, and a cowry necklace around his neck. Kai didn’t see any telltale bulges that often accompanied concealed weapons.

  “Why were you following me?” Goldilocks asked.

  Kai took his time answering. He didn’t want to appear scared. “Friend of mine said you might have something we’re interested in.”

  Goldilocks frowned. “And what might that be?”

  “I have to tell you?” Kai said.

  Goldilocks narrowed his eyes. “Could be any number of things.”

  Kai glanced at Bean and frowned, then said, “Maybe we made a mistake. Maybe he’s the wrong guy.”

  “I bet you’re right,” Bean said. “Definitely the wrong guy. We should probably just go.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Goldilocks said. His eyes left Kai and traveled to Bean. “How do I know you guys aren’t cops?”

  “Sure,” Kai said. “You see a lot of cops my age. We’re not old enough to drive, so we’re the ones who ride bicycles.”

  Goldilocks nodded at Bean. “He could be a cop. Maybe you’re just some trick to get me to drop my guard.”

  “That’s a good one. Never thought of it.” Kai shrugged. “Could be, I guess.”

  The words hung as motionless as the hot air.

  “How much money you got?” Goldilocks suddenly asked.

  It was amazing, Kai thought. He hated to admit it, but he’d learned a few things from his father. Like how to make someone feel like they just had to buy or sell something.

  “Enough,” Kai answered. “But we could be cops, remember?”

  Goldilocks wasn’t amused. “What are you doing driving a hearse?”

  “You’ve heard of undercover cops?” Kai said. “My friend here’s an undertaker cop.”

  Goldilocks smirked. “What’s in the back?”

  “Casket,” Bean answered.

  “And what’s in the casket?” asked Goldilocks.

  “A stiff, what else?”

  “Let’s see,” said Goldilocks.

  “You’re kidding me,” Kai said.

  “You want what I got, first you show me,” Goldilocks said. “One thing’s for damn sure. No cop’s gonna be driving around in a hearse with a dead body inside.”

  Kai looked at Bean, who shrugged like it was no big deal. He went around to the back of the hearse and swung open the door, then reached in and undid some straps designed to keep the casket from slipping around. The floor in the back of the hearse had rollers which made it easy to slide the casket partway out. Kai, Goldilocks, and Bean stood in the hot sun. Its rays reflected off the dark polished wood of the casket.

  “You sure about this?” Bean asked.

  Goldilocks nodded.

  Bean reached down and lifted the part of the casket lid that covered the upper half of the body. They looked down at a thin old man with just a fringe of white hair around the sides of his bald head. Kai could see at once that the body had been jarred during the drive. The head was turned to the side, and you could see the line where the makeup job stopped and the gray lifeless flesh began. Bean pulled on a pair of latex gloves, then reached into the casket and repositioned the head. The dead guy’s arms were lying at his side. Bean took the right hand and laid it across the body. Then he laid the left hand over the right.

  “I thought they got all stiff from rigor mortis,” Goldilocks said.

  “We massage that out while they’re still on the table,” Bean said. “Weird thing about rigor mortis is, once it’s gone it doesn’t come back.” He picked up the dead guy’s left arm again and swung it like a kid playing jump rope.

  “Jesus, man, you’ll pull the arm clear off,” Goldilocks said.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Bean said. “Not like they’re gonna look up his sleeve and see that I broke him off at the elbow.” He twisted the hand hard. Kai heard something pop. “There goes the wrist,” Bean said.

  “Christ.” Goldilocks turned away, looking a little green.

  Bean turned to Kai. “Guess we can put him back, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  Bean closed the lid and slid the casket back into the hearse, redid the straps and closed the door.

  “So what did you guys want anyway?” Goldilocks asked. “Smoke, roofies, special K, X? What’s your pleasure?”

  Kai had to think fast. “Shrooms,” he said.

  Bean gave him a look like he had no idea what Kai was talking about.

  Goldilocks grinned. “You guys really are a couple of freaks, aren’t you. I can try to get you some, but it’s gonna take a while. Why not go for some acid instead?”

  “’Cause we like shrooms,” Kai said.

  “Okay. I’ll see what I can do. No promises.”

  “How long?” Kai asked, knowing that was the expected question.

  “Don’t know. Might take a week, maybe longer. Where can I find you guys?”

  Kai turned to Bean. “Give him your cell number.”

  Bean shot him a major frown, but Kai gave him a “don’t-dick-around” look. Bean gave Goldilocks the number.

  “Okay. I’ll let you know when I get something.” Goldilocks walked back down to the gate and unwrapped the chain. The gate swung open.

  Kai and Bean got back into the hearse and drove through. Kai even waved at Goldilocks.

  “Shrooms?” Bean sputtered as soon as they were back on the road. “What the hell is that?”

  “Mushrooms,” Kai said.

  “Why mushrooms? I hate mushrooms.”

  “What does it matter?” Kai asked. “We’re not buying anything from him. I just had to make sure I didn’t say something he might have had on him, because then we would have had to buy it. I tried to think of the one thing I could be reasonably certain he wouldn’t have.”

  “Mushrooms.” Bean made a face and stuck out his tongue. “So what are we gonna do when he calls in a week and says he has them?”

  “I don’t know” Kai said. “We’ve got time to figure that one out.”


  They rode for a while without speaking. Then Kai remembered something. “Hey, Bean, did you really break the stiff’s wrist?”

  “Naw. That’s just a noise all dead wrists make if you shake them that way.”

  Kai glanced nervously at his friend. “Can I ask how you knew that?”

  “Hey, you know, you gotta do something to keep it interesting.”

  Twenty-seven

  They dropped off the stiff at the funeral home in Belle Harbor and then drove back to Sun Haven.

  “Think you’ll be out tomorrow morning?” Bean asked. “Surfline’s predicting one to three feet, offshore winds.”

  “Sounds okay,” Kai said. “I better remember to bring Spazzy’s wet suit and towel with me.”

  “That reminds me,” Bean said. “There’s a book in the glove compartment. The one with the squid on the cover.”

  Kai took out the book. It was a paperback, old and worn out like the others, but with a label that said it was from the Sun Haven Public Library. The title was An Anthropologist on Mars. Kai almost started to read the title out loud, then caught himself. He wasn’t sure how to pronounce anthropologist. He wasn’t exactly sure what it was, either.

  “What about it?” he asked.

  “There’s a story inside,” Bean said. “I think it’s called A Surgeon’s Life.’ Check it out.”

  Kai turned to the story. He really didn’t feel like reading it, but he did notice the words “Tourette’s syndrome” in the text. “Just tell me, okay?”

  “It’s about this surgeon in Canada with Tourette’s syndrome,” Bean said. “The guy’s just like Spazzy. He does all this crazy stuff. Hops around, sniffs people, makes crazy sounds. But the second he puts on a surgical gown and goes into the operating room, it all goes away and he’s as steady as a rock. Want to know what else? The guy flies his own airplane. Same thing happens. Soon as he gets in the pilot’s seat, he’s flawless.”

  Kai riffled the pages of the book. “You took this out of the library?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You just felt like it?”

  “Dude, I had to find out what the story was. I mean, after you met Spazzy, didn’t you become like, totally curious?”

  “Not really,” Kai admitted. “I just figured, he’s got this weird condition, but it’s not his fault and he seems to deal with it okay.”

  “Not me. I hear about something like that, I have to learn everything I can about it.”

  “Afraid you’ll catch it?” Kai asked.

  Bean glanced at him while he drove. “You want the whole truth and nothing but? Sure, I wanted to know if I could catch it. I mean, you didn’t think of that?”

  Kai shook his head.

  “Well, the good news is you can’t. It’s not contagious or anything like that,” Bean said. “The bad news for Spazzy is that there’s no cure. There are some medicines that calm you down, but a lot of people don’t like them because they make you sleepy.”

  Kai was quiet, thinking. They were on Seaside Drive, heading back toward Sun Haven. “So what’d you think of Goldilocks?” Kai asked.

  “Not my type,” Bean said.

  “But definitely the type who could get his hands on all sorts of illegal and stolen stuff, don’t you think?” Kai asked. “Booger said the trunk of his car was full of stuff.”

  “If you’re asking me if I could picture him selling stolen surfboards, the answer is yes,” said Bean. “But just because I think that, doesn’t mean he did. You know how the law works. You have to be able to prove it.”

  “When you first saw him this afternoon back in Sun Haven, where exactly was he?” Kai asked.

  “On Main Street.”

  “Where on Main Street?”

  Bean glanced at Kai and frowned. “I don’t know. Just on Main Street. Why?”

  “It’s important, Bean,” Kai said.

  “Let me think,” Bean said. “I guess right in the middle of town.”

  “He was driving?”

  “No, when I first saw him he was just getting into the Jeep.”

  “And the Jeep was parked on the street?” Kai asked.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “So he wasn’t just driving through Sun Haven when you saw him. He’d been doing something there.”

  “I guess.”

  “Right there in the middle of town, by the bank, the Lobster House, Sun Haven Surf—”

  “And about twenty other places of business,” Bean cut him short. “Look, I know you’d love to find a way to connect Curtis’s stolen boards to Buzzy Frank, but that is a huge stretch. I mean, we still don’t know if Goldilocks even has the boards. Or if he does, how he got them. I hate to say it, but you’re starting to sound like one of those conspiracy theory weirdos. The type who sees a plot behind every rock.”

  “Maybe not every rock,” Kai said. “Maybe just behind every stolen surfboard.”

  Bean shook his head. “Take my advice, dude. Stick to the Screamers Liberation Front. It’s got a more concrete feeling to it.”

  By now they’d reached the outskirts of Sun Haven.

  “Should I drop you at the shop?” Bean asked.

  Kai almost said yes, then remembered why he’d left the shop in the first place. “Can we go to the Driftwood first? I have to get something.”

  “No prob.”

  Bean parked in front of the motel, and Kai got out and jogged around to the back. Curtis was sitting almost exactly where Kai had left him earlier that morning. The pile of boards he wanted to keep lay beside his chair. About half the remaining boards still leaned against fences, trees, and any other available vertical surface. The curds of foam and fiberglass left from the great surfboard massacre covered the yard like a thin coating of snow.

  “What happened?” Kai asked.

  Curtis didn’t appear to hear him. The bottle of Jack Daniel’s lay empty on the ground beside the chair.

  “Curtis?”

  “Huh?” The older man blinked as if he’d just woken from a dream.

  “How come they stopped destroying the boards?” Kai asked.

  “Don’t know,” Curtis replied. “Seemed like they were having a fine old time killing surfboards and then one of their cell phones rang and the one fella says to the other, ‘That’s it. Come on, let’s go.’ Next thing I know, they toss the axes in the back of the truck with all the broken boards and drive away.”

  “Like maybe they got called to a fire?” Kai pretended to act dumb.

  “No, not like that,” Curtis said, eyeing Kai carefully. “More like the person who called said, ‘Okay, boys, you’ve had enough fun. Now come on home.’”

  “Strange,” Kai said.

  “Well, I thought so. Then again, what the hell would I know?” But the way Curtis looked at Kai was as if he suspected something.

  Kai felt uncomfortable under the scrutiny. “Well, who cares why? I guess the good news is they’re gone, and you’ve still got half your boards left.”

  Curtis nodded slowly and then gazed away Kai figured he didn’t feel like talking. He went up to the room and got the sketch book, then went back down and out to the hearse.

  “Now to the shop?” Bean asked.

  “Yup.”

  A few minutes later Bean dropped him in front of T-licious. “See you in the morning?”

  “Right,” Kai said, and got out. He went into T-licious. It was now the middle of a hot, sunny day, and the store was empty. The Alien Frog Beast Chief Hockaloogie was sitting near the cash register, reading a newspaper on the glass counter.

  “Did I just see you get out of a hearse?” he asked.

  Kai nodded.

  Pat glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s been two hours since I told you to go get that notebook. What’d you do, go to a funeral?”

  “Not exactly,” Kai said, placing the notebook on the counter. Pat thumbed through the pages and stopped at a circular design with a T-L in the center and the words “Team T-licious” in fancy script forming the perimeter. I
t was actually the one Kai liked best, and he was surprised his father liked it too.

  Pat pressed a nicotine-stained finger down on the sketch. “This one.”

  “Okay.” Kai felt an unexpected sense of pride.

  “What do we do next?” Pat asked.

  “This is just a sketch,” Kai said. “Next I do an actual finished piece of art.”

  Pat grinned, revealing small, yellowed teeth. “And then we can have our own surf team, right?”

  Kai nodded. The way Pat looked at him made him realize something he had not considered before. This wasn’t just about doing a logo. This was part of a new scam.

  Twenty-eight

  The next morning at sunrise, Kai was on the beach waxing up. Despite the early hour the air was already warm. He knew he would be hot in his wet suit today. It was time to get some surfing trunks and a rash guard. He finished waxing and picked up his board. He was just about to head into the water when Lucas and Buzzy came down the beach. Buzzy was wearing a shorty wet suit, and Lucas was in a white long-sleeved rash guard and orange surf trunks.

  “How’s Sam?” Kai asked. He half expected Lucas to say something nasty like, “What do you care?”

  Instead Lucas said, “He’s okay. It wasn’t that bad. Just a couple of stitches.”

  “It was an accident, you know,” Kai said. “I thought he was gonna snap one of my fins off.”

  Lucas put his board down and started waxing. “You gonna enter the Fairport competition?”

  Kai didn’t answer.

  “Let me guess,” Lucas said. “You’ll think about it, right? That’s your answer to everything.”

  Kai knew he was being baited. It would have been easy to take the bait, but he had a better idea. He dropped his voice so Buzzy wouldn’t hear. “How about you, Lucas? Did you think about it? Or was it someone else’s idea?”

  Everybody has a face they wear for the rest of the world. It’s the face they want everyone to see and judge them by. Some people would call it an expression, but to Kai it’s like a mask. But every once in a while, in a moment of stress or surprise or just relaxed good cheer, they drop the mask and reveal their true face. That’s just what Lucas did. He stiffened. Above the collar of the rash guard, his neck began to grow red. Then he picked up his board and headed for the water.