Lone Wolf #12: Phoenix Inferno

by Barry, Mike

  “I am very much afraid,” the man said, “that he is on his way here. I think that it is very likely that this is the real meaning of the situation. I have received a few calls from him within the last few days and he was extremely agitated, apparently because of this Burton Wulff.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The question is,” the man said, “whether he is coming here for sanctuary or whether he has decided that I too must die. I must consider that.”

  “I thought you would want to.”

  “What do you think?”

  Dick thought about this for a while. It was a collect call, it wasn’t his nickel, besides the answer might be important. “I think that he may have two things so mixed up in his mind that it really doesn’t matter,” he said. “He can’t separate the sanctuary from the need to kill. The same thing that makes him look for sanctuary might make him a killer. I don’t know. But I wouldn’t imagine that he could take too much pressure.”

  “That is helpful. I think you are right.”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s heading down that way, though.”

  “Oh yes,” the man said, “oh yes, I am also sure. There is little doubt but that this is what he would do.”

  “Well,” Dick said, “I wanted to give you the word.”

  “I do appreciate that very much. What do you think your own plans will be?”

  “I think I’ll have to report it,” Dick said, looking away from the corpse, aware that he had been staring at it throughout the conversation and for the first time then beginning to feel the impact of what it was, that thing in the room. Shielding barriers had come down in his head and he realized that he was staring at a dead, horribly mutilated human body. He closed his eyes, shook his head and turned himself fully against the phone. “I have no choice.”

  “Well, I can certainly see your point there.”

  “I’m the most logical suspect, you see. Even with Carlin gone they might say that I killed all three and disposed of his body secretly to make it look like murder and suicide. And once certain things start to come out I’ll look lousy. I really don’t see any way that I can get away unless I go completely underground and never come out.”

  “I would offer my services if they would be of any assistance. You realize that you are entirely free to stay here as long as you wish.”

  “I appreciate that,” Dick said, “and I know what you’re saying but it would not work out. I would only bring pressure.” Unconsciously he was mimicking the formalisms he thought and for some reason that struck him as hysterical, the way human beings unconsciously fell into the speech or habit patterns of one another, not that it was anything to laugh about. “You couldn’t guarantee my safety,” he said, “not if your own was threatened.”

  “Well,” the man said after a long pause, “well yes, I do see what you are saying. I understand that you are trying to simplify the situation for me.”

  “Nothing can be simplified,” Dick said, closing his eyes. The corpse seemed to have acquired an odor, although again this could merely be his imagination. The scene was beginning to come at him in waves now like flak pounding the horizon in Vietnam. “It can only be anticipated.”

  “I want you to know that he will pay for this.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Dick said. “It doesn’t matter; what does paying him back mean? They’re both as dead.”

  “There are degrees of death. Revenge can be known to the dead; avenged they sleep at peace.”

  “Yeah,” Dick said, “yeah, well, I don’t believe that,” and he found himself clamping the phone hard now. There was absolutely nothing else to say. Whatever else he had intended in this call, he hadn’t planned to get into a religious discussion. That was absolutely fruitless and stupid. “All right,” he said, “I wanted to tell you that.”

  “It was very kind of you. I want you to know that it is appreciated very much,” and Dick hung up abruptly. Religious or not, mystically inclined or otherwise, one thing was sure: He was a businessman. When a conversation was terminated it was done so at his decision and without any attempt to make the breaking of the connection less abrupt. Which probably, Dick thought bitterly, putting down the phone, meant that he had chalked up a debit on this one because he had terminated the conversation, not the man from Mexico City. The man from Mexico City had been willing to go on talking, possibly feeling that Dick needed words of comfort. That was too ironic. That above all things was too ironic to be handled.

  He walked away from the phone, looking down at the corpse, thinking of the other corpse upstairs, balancing off one thing against the other. The mutilation of Joe had been bad enough, but what Carlin had done to the woman was absolutely impossible. He must have hated women a lot. But then that was a general and not a specific point; women were always treated more brutally than men, all up and down the line the focus and force of aggression came upon them. They were the receptacles, and in the nightmare of a hundred million beds a night all over the world men acted away and pounded out their fury on them. Women saw how the world really was. Women fucked and died with the hammer of the world coming down upon them. As bad as it was to be a man in America, to be a woman was probably worse … you did not act, but merely reacted; you did not shift but merely had that which was unspeakable inflicted upon you in a private and devastating manner that ripped you out totally … so that the inner landscape of a woman’s mind might resemble what the outer landscape of Janice’s body in that bedroom was … no, he could not pursue it. He simply could not pursue this line of thought any more; it led nowhere. Nothing led anywhere. Or then again it all led to the cops. At the end everything did; they were always there.

  Dick picked up the phone and put the call in. To think about it was to risk not doing it and that would be very dangerous. He had figured this out. He had to follow his instincts now; he could not swing away from them. He had to follow this because anything else would have been hopeless. This way, maybe, he might have a chance. Then again he might not. Either way, it was not as if he were passing up very much. Vietnam had wrecked him. He was a war casualty. He hadn’t had much of a life even with two employers and plenty of money. Maybe this way he would again. Maybe not.

  He told them what he had to. It was hard for them to understand. Dick was weeping.

  XII

  On the plane Carlin felt safe for the first time. It must have been the first time he had felt at peace for years. He had not realized the way that circumstances were impinging upon him, factors were squeezing in, until he had exploded. It wasn’t the murders that had given him that hounded, pressured feeling. On the contrary, the murders were the first step on the path of release. He had gone sane. He had started to make the long road back toward sanity by killing them. Now he was getting more sane all the time, and soon he would be entirely sane. Who was to say what manner of man he might be then? No one would be able to touch him once he got all his brains together. That was happening. That was happening right now.

  Unbuckling his seat belt on the empty flight to Mexico City, Carlin considered his only mistake; he probably should have killed all three. Should have waited until Dick, the other houseman, came in for duty the next day and murdered him in a clean and decisive way, one shot through the temple with a gloved hand, then put the gun into Dick’s palm and make it look with the two dirty murders and the one very clean one like a classic murder-and-suicide of the sort that would have kept the cops at bay for weeks, possibly permanently. But then again, calculating everything in the intricate and brilliant arena of his mind where the lights played and dazzled now and all was almost music, then there would have been a search for him even more intensified than it would have been otherwise. They would have feared that he was the fourth victim. His every move would have been watched.

  Whereas this way, with Joe and Janice dead, with Dick discovering the bodies, there was a very good likelihood that it would all be pinned on Dick … and they would not believe his denials, would not believe either that he simply hadn
’t stashed Carlin’s body somewhere, really deep-sixed it because his would have been the important corpse, the one they would really have hung him for. Oh, that was brilliant thinking, Carlin thought, and wrung his hands, gave a little bubbling giggle. He did not know how truly shrewd he had been. Trust the subconscious, that was all. Always rely upon, go back to the subconscious in times of stress and if you had taken care of it, it would take care of you. He had taken care of his subconscious, all right, feeding on Janice’s enormous tits for all these years, boobs that were so big it was ridiculous for a grown man to be sucking around on them … but his subconscious had been pleased and alerted by his efforts; his subconscious had been well sated. Had returned the favor. Carlin giggled again.

  And now Montez would take care of him. Montez would offer him sanctuary, a peace so complete that it would become his life. In a villa on a mountaintop high off Mexico City he could live a life of ease with a man who owed him many favors until such time as he chose, on his own terms, to emerge. Montez would be happy, would in that curiously formal way of his be honored, he would say. And who knew? You left it up to the subconscious as always and the subconscious took good care of you … who knew but that he might not deal with Montez too at an auspicious moment? He had the weaponry, he had the respect, he would have the opportunity. A lot of servants, but timing was everything in these things. He could add Mexico City to his own Southwest. Damn the middleman. Why pay Montez money for shuttling when he could shuttle—and pay—himself?

  He wrung his hands in ecstasy, his eyes blinking, and the stewardess came over, looked at him as if he were in pain. She was very young and unsure of herself. All these Mexican stewardesses seemed to be. “Can I get you something, sir?” she said.

  Carlin put on his best smile and looked up at her. He knew he was a handsome man. That assurance had always been deep in him; hadn’t Janice often said that he was as good a fuck as he was good-looking? Not that he wanted to get involved with the stewardess, have her remember him on this flight, that would be stupid … but still, it was irresistible. “I would like to put my head on your chest,” he said.

  She backpedalled, not too easy in a jet at speed, her eyes round. “Can I get you a drink?” she said. “What kind of drink did you say you would like?”

  “I do not want a drink,” Carlin said formally. “I did not ask for a drink; I asked for the privilege of putting my head on your chest.” Montez would have phrased it this way and with a little bow. “Of course if you find that so impossible—”

  The stewardess was still moving away from him. The five or six other passengers, half-hidden behind enormous seats had turned, he could see the edges of profiles showing like flowers peering through crevices in a wall. “I will get you a drink,” the stewardess said, “but if you make difficulties for me in flight I must warn you that I will be forced to notify the pilot and the copilot and a full report will be made on landing.”

  Shit. All of it was shit; Carlin felt his mood beginning to turn rancid on him, turn inside out like a shirt collar. There was no fun or satisfaction anywhere. “I don’t want a drink,” he said to her loudly. “If I wanted a drink I would have asked for it. You would have known that I wanted a drink; I can make my needs known perfectly well.”

  “Sir,” the little stewardess said, “I will get you a pillow and you can rest your head. I—”

  “I don’t want to rest my head,” Carlin said. “I feel perfectly all right. Do you think there’s anything wrong with my head? I mean, is that your implication?”

  This is foolish, he thought. It was important that he make this flight as inconspicuously as possible; he did not even want Montez to know that he was coming until he came out of the plane and phoned him … and yet there he was carrying on a scene with a stewardess who was barely old enough to be his daughter. She could not treat him this way. No one could treat him like this; they did not have the right. If she knew what kind of man he was, what he had accomplished, what he had done, and why he was on this plane, she would treat him in a different manner, all right.

  That was for sure. “Come here,” he said and reached forward, got a corner of her skirt in his hand, tugged. She backed away, the skirt coming from between his fingers. The passengers were looking more intently now; their faces, still flowerlike, had popped all the way from behind their seats. He felt fixated, locked in this gaze. The stewardess backed away. Suddenly Carlin was filled with hopelessness and a kind of revulsion. He had no business carrying on this way. It wasn’t doing him any good at all. The stewardess was moving toward the flight cabin. “Look,” Carlin said to her, “look, please. I’m sorry.”

  She turned. “You can’t do this,” she said, “you can’t do this kind of thing to me.”

  “I know that,” he said, “I shouldn’t have done it. I’m not feeling well. It must be the altitude.”

  “Stewardesses are not your servants. We are professional employees and entitled to be treated as professionals.”

  “Oh yes,” Carlin said, “oh yes.” He swung in his seat. “I’m not used to flying,” he said, “it must be that I’m very scared, I’d never act this way any other time.”

  Her face buckled into something more accessible, even pitying. He had found the right line to take. Stewardesses, pilots, all airline employees liked that. Experienced travelers liked nothing better than seeing someone getting sick in a cabin, as long as it was panic and there was no cause for it. “It happens to the best of us, sir,” she said.

  “I think I will take that pillow, now.”

  “Good,” she said, “good. I’ll get you that.” She went back up the aisle, turning from him quite gracefully, right at the pilot’s cabin and into some alcove where the pillows were undoubtedly kept. The passengers had sunk beneath the seat-line again. But that was too close, Carlin thought. That was much closer than I really want to play this.

  He gripped himself in his seat and sat there for a while, the plane bouncing a little in flight, wondering if he had misunderstood this situation … and if he had really lost control of himself.

  XIII

  Driving into it, Wulff thought that Phoenix was bust-out country too.

  Most of America was, of course. Most of America had crystallized toward one of two poles: Harlem or Las Vegas. The better sections verged toward Vegas, the worst looked like Harlem, and those in the middle that had any kind of flexibility were trying to become like Vegas with all their might while sweeping up the crumbs and particles that were pure Harlem. One was the model, the other the penalty, and yet, in the dream that was the country Wulff thought they came together so that one could not tell, being dumped into either of them at night when the lights glowed, where they were. The Apollo Theatre or the Sands, both of them would look the same under the cover of night. They were the bust-out capitals all right, the monuments in all of the western world to the way it would all end up when the American string had been pulled. All of America was piling toward those poles, spinning centrifugally, breaking apart … but somehow what kept the country was its ability to sustain the belief, at least among most of those being pulled apart, that there was a real difference between the two. There was not. Wulff had seen both and he was sure of that as he was of nothing else. Still, the myth kept the country going; it kept the junkies going too, driving themselves in their inner flights toward the one or the other.

  Phoenix was a would-be Vegas; unlike Harlem it had chosen to shroud reality, whereas Harlem wallowed in it. But Phoenix, although it was a city that had elements of beauty, you could see beautiful things in it anyway if you were aesthetically inclined, was really the kind of place where people who couldn’t make it for Scarsdale or the Oakland Hills or Grosse Pointe would go. Fifty years ago Phoenix had been nothing; now in pastels it had been slung out across the desert: It had its millionaires, its reactionary senators, its bigoted cesspools that moved from the offices of the downtown to determine what part of the desert certain people would live in. It had its hustlers, too, who were w
orking the El Pastorale Estates, two hundred million acres of swamp underground available now at twenty-five dollars down and a hundred and ninety-nine dollars a month for life. They were working the El Pastorales out of the boiler rooms in downtown Phoenix just as the Pocono hustlers were calling up blind leads out of stinking cellars in Paramus, New Jersey. But the air of Phoenix, Wulff thought, was the more desperate because it had started fresh, out of nothing, out of the desert, and in fifty years it had found nothing better to do than to recapitulate America. It had managed to compress two hundred years of corruption into half a century. It had set out from the beginning to be indistinguishable from the rest of America and it had succeeded. And still, with all of that, it was filled with people who could not make it to Grosse Pointe, played nominal host to a group of basketball players who were never good enough to sustain their skills in Madison Square Garden. It was a failed town.

  Wulff came into Phoenix the same way he had come out of Detroit: in a busted-out Fleetwood for a busted-out town, a little sadder, a little wiser, a lot of bodies behind him, a lot of moves made. But he was really no different from the man who had left Detroit, just as the man who had left Detroit differed little from the man who had hit it. He had really been the same for a long time now. For months he had been only an angrier and more efficient version of himself. Changes were only in the direction of making him more certain of his mission. He had never been so angry in his life. And he would be angrier tomorrow.

  He headed out toward the estate where Carlin lived. His plan, he guessed, was as simple and straightforward as his plans had always been; no duplicity, he would come up against Carlin’s home, he would reconnoiter, check out the terrain, prepare his ordnance, move in, check things out again, and then he would blow it up. Subtlety was wasted on the Carlins just as it was on almost anything in the world, just as subtlety would have been lost in the rotten town of Phoenix itself. America was Las Vegas. He would bomb out the estate and then Carlin would understand what had happened, but only at the moment of death. Never before. He was one of those people who you would have to kill to change. Wulff accepted that simplicity. At least you knew where you stood.