“No,” I said. “Why should it?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Pockface. “Just, a lot of guys it would bother, that’s all. You’re a real liberal guy. I respect that.”
“It’d bother the hell out of me,” said Snaggletooth.
“Yeah, that’s you,” Pockface told him. “But Al’s not like you. He’s a liberal kind of guy. And he’s right about that too! The Jewish, they’re just like you and me. Isn’t that right, Al?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s right.”
“Fuck that,” said Snaggletooth. “What I want is a closer look at that suitcase.”
“Good idea,” said Pockface. “Let’s all go down to our office, have better light to see by. Al can sit down, take a load off his feet. Don’t worry about the suitcase, Al, I’ll carry it. What’s that book you got with you?”
I handed him The Book of the Damned. He looked at the title as we began walking. It seemed mildly to surprise him. “Good book?” he asked.
“I think it is,” I said.
“The Book of the Damned. All about you, right?”
I must have stopped walking. Pockface pushed me gently on the arm to keep me moving down the long white corridor.
“Just kidding,” he said. “I’ll read the book sometime. Always looking for good books to read. That’s the way you broaden yourself, isn’t that right, now, Al?”
CHAPTER 14
WE MADE TURN AFTER TURN, THROUGH A MAZE OF IDENTICAL corridors. I tried to keep calm, to remember every turn we took. There was no one in the hallways. The TWA passengers had left long since. For all I knew, we were the only people left in the terminal.
They led me to a small office. It was almost bare, except for a filing cabinet in the corner and a scuffed brown desk pushed against the wall. Fluorescent lights shone all around us. A third man, dressed in the same uniform as the others, sat behind the desk in a straight-backed wooden chair. His skin had the same strange brown tint as theirs.
“Hey, Corky!” said Pockface. “Got a young fella here. Found him walking off with somebody else’s suitcase. Says it belongs to his sister.”
Corky stood up and pushed the chair away from the desk. Pockface laid the suitcase on the desk. I set The Book of the Damned beside it. Pockface gestured toward the chair. “Asseyez-vous, Al,” he said cordially.
I hesitated.
“Don’t know much French, do you?” he said. He took me by the shoulders and pushed me roughly into the chair. It slid back a few inches as I landed. He towered over me.
“Let’s get down to business,” he said. “You got any ID on you, let’s see it.”
“I’ve got my driver’s license,” I said, getting up from the chair. “And I’ll be glad to show it to you. But first I’d like to see some ID of yours, please.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Pockface mildly. And stood absolutely still for a second or two.
I didn’t see him pull his hand back. I might have caught a glimpse of his large, hard palm swinging through the air toward me. My head jerked violently to the right; a burning pain flooded my face. Dazed, I sat back down. It took a few seconds before I could open my eyes.
Everything was a blur. My glasses had gone sailing off my face. Somebody was lashing my wrists together behind the chair, tightly, with wire. “Fun and games is over, Al,” Pockface said. “You wanted to play I’ll show you mine if you show me yours, you shoulda done it out in baggage claim. Where there were people around, so they could hear you when you hollered.”
“What pocket you keep your wallet in?” Corky said from behind me. “Nev’ mind, here it is. Damn if it isn’t stuck tight.” He poked his fingers into my hip pocket. I tried to squirm away. “No, no,” he said. “Don’t bother getting up. I got my razor right here.”
Click! I felt my pocket pulled tight, then noisily cut away. I pressed my thighs together, hard. My wallet went flying through the air. Pockface caught it.
“Got it,” said Corky. “No trouble at all. Didn’t have to scrunch up your face so much, did you?”
“We ain’t hurt you none, yet,” said Snaggletooth.
“Hey, whaddaya know!” Pockface cried out. “This isn’t Al’s wallet. Belongs to some guy named Daniel Shapiro. In Pennsylvania, looks like.”
“Bet that’s another one of Al’s brother-in-laws,” said Snaggletooth. “Bet he’s got two sisters, both of them went and married Jews. Then Al stole this guy Shapiro’s wallet. Figured there’d be plenty of money there, didn’t you, Al?”
“Hey, Al, you know what?” said Pockface. “Your brother-in-law’s only thirteen years old. That’s what it says on his license. Right by the photo. Damn if he isn’t the ugliest kid I’ve ever seen. Glasses thick as Coke bottles.”
“You got some weird family,” said Snaggletooth.
“Where’s my glasses?” I said.
“Right here on the floor,” said Pockface. “Reminds me, we got to be careful. Might step on them just by accident. If we’re not careful, I mean.”
“How the fuck did this kid get a driver’s license if he’s only thirteen years old?” said Corky.
“Who knows?” said Pockface. “Maybe that’s the way they do it up in Pennsy. Now, Al,” he went on. “You listening to me? Corky is gonna play a little game with you.”
I felt Corky’s arm snake around my neck. His hand grasped my face. His finger lifted my left eyelid and held it open. There was a powerful smell of gasoline. In front of my eye something metallic gleamed, too close for me to focus on it.
“Corky’s got a needle there,” said Pockface. “He’s gonna see how close to your eyeball he can get that needle,” said Pockface. “Without touching it. He’s gonna try real hard not to touch it. You got to help him not touch it.”
“No,” I said faintly. “No.”
I tried to pull my head back. It was wedged firmly against Corky’s shoulder. I jerked myself slightly from side to side. The metallic glint followed, only the tiniest distance from the surface of my pupil.
I began to scream. First a series of short loud yelps, then one protracted howl of grief and terror—for the pain, and for the pain that was to come, and the blindness that would follow. For the space of I don’t know how many seconds, I felt myself to be nothing but that one extended howl.
“That was real good, Al,” said Pockface. “Good and loud and all. Only trouble is, there’s nobody can hear you. So you might want to do your lungs a favor, spare them all the hollering. Know what I mean?”
“I wouldn’t jerk around like that either,” said Corky. “All you’re gonna do is get your eyeball stuck on my needle. You just stay real still. That’s it. You’re a good boy, Al. I got real close that time.”
“What do you want from me?” I said. It was almost a whisper; I couldn’t speak any louder. I didn’t dare take any but the most shallow breaths.
“Just want to talk to you,” said Pockface.
“Shit,” Snaggletooth said. “What have we got to talk to him about?”
“You shut up!” Pockface yelled at him. “Got plenty to talk to you about, Al. Drugs, f’instance. What d’ya think about drugs?”
“Drugs?”
“Drugs. Like heroin. Like mary-gee-wanna. Haven’t you ever heard of drugs? Don’t you read the goddamn newspapers?”
Corky released my eyelid. I began to breathe again. I could not stop blinking.
“I think—” I really hadn’t thought anything, until that moment, about either heroin or marijuana. People in the slums smoked them, or injected them, or whatever. They had nothing to do with me. “I think drugs are a terrible problem in this country,” I said.
“That’s right. And terrible problems call for drastic measures. Don’t they?”
“Well, I don’t know just what we ought to do about—”
My right eyelid was pulled up. Again I glimpsed the needle’s shine. I moaned softly.
“Don’t they call for drastic measures?”
I felt the point of the needle touch the cor
ner of my eye, where the inside of the lid met the tenderness of the eyeball. I cried out. I tried desperately to pull myself back. “Ooh,” said Corky. “Got a little close there, didn’t I?”
“Don’t they, Al?”
“Yes,” I wailed. “They call for drastic measures.”
“And how you think drugs get into this country, Al?”
“Get in?”
“They all come in from foreign countries. You knew that.”
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“Sure you did, Al.”
He began pacing in front of me as he spoke. “What happens is this. The Mexicans smuggle heroin across the border, into Texas, say, or New Mexico. Then your sister, or whatever the hell she is, gets it from them. Then she puts it into a suitcase, puts the suitcase onto a plane, and somehow manages not to get on the plane herself. Then you pick the suitcase up in Miami, and you got a million dollars in heroin in your hands. All ready to sell to the dealers, up and down the East Coast.”
“No,” I said.
“Oh, yes, Al. You know it, good as I do. In a minute we’re gonna open this suitcase and find the heroin. And then you know what’s gonna happen to you?”
“No, no, no-o-o.”
“I keep telling you, yes, yes, ye-s-s. We’re gonna find that heroin. And then we got the rest of your life planned for you. Don’t care how many Jew lawyers you got for brothers-in-law, you ain’t never getting out. We got you now, for good.”
“Lookit him sweat,” said Snaggletooth.
“There’s no heroin in that suitcase,” I said.
But deep down I knew different. At age fifteen, Rochelle was already an experienced housebreaker. Julian had told me that. Why shouldn’t she have tried out drug dealing too?
“It’s locked,” Pockface said. “Let’s have that screwdriver.”
I saw his blurred form bend over the suitcase. I heard the latches snap open. Bitterness burned deep in my stomach. Fifteen years old, and Lord knows how many boys she’s seduced, how many homes she’s robbed. How many trusting old sick ladies she’s deceived—
“What’d I tell you?” Pockface cried.
—and now it’s drugs, she’s dealing drugs, and now my life is over—
“Right there in the lining! There’s the stash. You can feel it, sewed into the lining!”
“Oldest goddamn trick in the book,” said Snaggletooth. “Don’t know why they still think they can get away with it.”
“Corky, you got your razor? Gimme your razor.”
The lining ripped noisily, slashed open. Pockface reached in his hand.
“Shit!” he said. “It’s a goddamn book!”
CHAPTER 15
THE THREE MEN CLUSTERED AROUND WHATEVER IT WAS POCKFACE had in his hands. I glimpsed a slender blue-covered volume, so much like Julian’s copy of The Book of the Damned that for a moment I imagined they might be the same. I struggled to stand up, to go over and look at it with them. I’d forgotten I was tied into the chair.
“A book?” said Corky.
“ ‘The Case for the UFO,’” Snaggletooth read aloud, in a tone of disgust. “ ‘By M. K. Jessup.’ ”
“Look inside it,” said Corky. “Maybe she hollowed it out. You know, cut the pages out, put the stash inside.”
Pockface flipped through the pages. “Nah,” he said, “it’s all there. Somebody scribbled over it, is all. And doodled. Cripes, what weird pictures!”
“What’d she want to sew that into the lining for?” said Corky.
“Don’t know,” said Pockface, setting the book on the desk. “We’ll go through it later, figure that out. Let’s see what else is in this goddamn suitcase.”
A pile of what seemed to be clothes began to accumulate on the floor. “Hey, hey, hey!” said Snaggletooth. “Take a look at this!”
“Wow!” said Pockface. He turned to me. “This sister of yours is one hot chickee, Al! Got two boxes of Trojans in her suitcase.”
“Gonna have her a wild weekend,” said Snaggletooth.
“And get a load of these underpants!” said Pockface. He held up against his face something that looked like a vivid red cloth. Then a black one. “All perfumed too.” I could see his large body swaying as he began to chant, “All-the- girls-in-France, woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo . . .”
“Find any heroin yet?” I said.
“You shut up!” he yelled. He turned back to the suitcase and again began rooting through it. The pile on the floor grew larger. “Well, hey, hey, hey. What do you know? What do you know?”
“What?” said Snaggletooth.
“Envelope. Got all her receipts in it, looks like. Hey, now this is something! For you, Corky. Seems like this lady rented herself a car in Albuquerque. August the nineteenth. ’Bout three weeks ago.”
“Yeah?” said Corky. “What kind of car?”
“A 1963 Plymouth Valiant. So the little piece of paper says.”
Corky whistled. “That’s it all right.”
“And what the hell’s this?” said Snaggletooth. “A motel receipt. Monday, September ninth. Yesterday. At the Sunset Motel. Roswell, New Mexico.”
There were other receipts, for other dates, all of them in Roswell, New Mexico. The three men tore at the slips of paper. They fought one another to see them. For a moment I thought they’d forgotten about me.
Then Pockface moved toward me.
“Shit,” he said.
I saw the huge shape loom over me. I felt Corky’s arm tighten around my neck. His finger forced my left eye wide open. I wanted to scream. I bit my lip.
“Awright, Shapiro,” Pockface said. “You start talking, and you start talking fast. What was this cunt up to in Roswell?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You lying little kike! What was she doing in Roswell?”
“I tell you I don’t know.”
Pockface took a breath, lowered his voice. “Listen to me, Danny. I got the impression you don’t see too good, am I right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right.”
“You’ll see a hell of a lot worse with a needle sticking into your eyeball.”
“Don’t!” I screamed. “For God’s sake, please don’t! I swear to God I’ll tell you everything I know. But I don’t know anything. I don’t know what she was doing in Roswell. I never even heard of Roswell. I swear to God I haven’t.”
“Never heard of Roswell, New Mexico?”
“No!”
“Never heard of a disk that came down, crashed?”
“No, no!”
“Never heard of any little men found dead inside it? Or maybe alive, just almost dead?”
“No-o-o!”
“I count to ten,” said Corky. “Then in goes the needle.”
“You’ve got it all wrong!” I shrieked. “The crash was at Maury Island. That’s in Puget Sound. Not New Mexico. Never New Mexico. It was Harold Dahl who saw it. Only he didn’t see it, because it didn’t happen. Nothing happened. It was all a hoax. You understand? A hoax.”
I babbled on and on, at the top of my voice, about Harold Dahl and Maury Island and its all being a hoax. I was obsessed with the idea they were too stupid to know what the word hoax meant. And because they didn’t know what a hoax was, they were going to stick a needle into my eye.
Finally I ran out of breath. Corky didn’t start counting to ten. The others were silent too.
Snaggletooth said, “Maury Island, shit.”
Corky’s hand didn’t move from my eye. But his muscles relaxed, and I found I was able to blink. He seemed to be trying to keep himself from laughing.
Snaggletooth said, “Harold Dahl, shit.” And snickered.
“Come on,” said Corky. “We gonna waste the whole night here, or what? This kid doesn’t know shit about Roswell. He doesn’t know shit about shit.”
“Danny,” said Pockface mildly, “you don’t know shit about shit, do you?”
“No,” I said. “I guess I don’t.”
They were
all laughing now.
“All you know is what Harold Dahl says, what Jack Shit says, what this other fella says. Isn’t that right?”
I said nothing. My face blazed with shame and relief.
“You don’t even know this Perlmann bitch, do you?”
I shook my head no.
“Just wanted to steal the suitcase, right?”
I nodded.
“Probably figured it was a girl’s suitcase, right? From the color. Figured, a suitcase like that, there had to be girls’ underwear in there. So you could try it on. That’s what you like to do, try on girls’ underwear. Am I right?”
I sat motionless, my eyes shut, my face flaming.
“Knew it the minute I laid eyes on him,” said Pockface.
“Lookit him sweat,” said Snaggletooth.
“Go ahead, Corky,” said Pockface. “Show him the picture. Let our little friend know what he’s getting himself into.”
“Danny,” said Corky, moving around to stand in front of me. “I want to show you a little something. Scenic photograph from Roswell, New Mexico. Think it might interest you.”
He held the photo right in front of my eyes for just a second. Then he pulled it away. I had the impression of a metallic vehicle like a flying saucer resting on the ground, with a humanlike creature lying inside it, in some contorted posture, presumably dead. Corky held the picture about three feet from me. Without my glasses it was a blur. The wire cut into my wrists as I strained against the chair, trying to get a little closer, see the photo a little better.
“Hell,” said Pockface. “Let’s give him his glasses.”
Snaggletooth picked them up from the floor and put them on my face. By some miracle they hadn’t shattered. There was a long vertical crack in the right lens, from the top almost to the bottom. But the frame seemed to be holding it together.
I saw how I’d misread the photo. Yes, there was a vehicle; yes, it was resting on the ground. But it was an ordinary automobile. And there was a humanlike being inside, in the driver’s seat, visible through the windshield, and yes, this humanlike being was plainly dead. He had died badly, his body twisted, his eyes practically bursting out of his skull with terror. But he was an ordinary human being.
Journal of a UFO Investigator Page 11
