Masters of Horror

by Lee Pletzers

  He was opportunity on the hoof.

  The white guy had longish red-brown hair, bright blue eyes, and a little reddish mustache. He was driving a tan Acura, maybe a ‘95, and he had a gold watch on his right wrist. This was looking better and better.

  Hobey saw him too. But Hobey was across the parking lot, trotting up real slow. Hobey was too old, too fat. Didn’t smoke, drank Night Train instead. Sold the rock sometimes, but never used, and acted like he was ruff because of it.

  Dwayne was leaning into the white guy’s passenger side window by the time Hobey got there. “Whus’up,” Dwayne said, “What you need, tell me, I help,”

  The white guy’s mouth was hanging open a little. His eyes dilating, shrinking, dilating, shrinking. A tongue so dry you could almost hear the rasp of it as be licked his lips. Word: it was base.

  “Rock,” the guy said. ‘Crack’. Things white guys called base cocaine.

  “How much?’

  “Uh—sixty bucks worth.”

  Man, he was fucked up. Not supposed to make a deal that way, people rip you off. They sure do.

  Dwayne almost laughed. But he said, “Okay, I take you there.”

  “Get in.”

  Hobey was coming around to the guy’s driver side, “What you need, chief? I get it for you, I find the best—”

  “I got it,” Dwayne snapped. “I taking care of it.” He gestured briskly to the white guy. “Hobey’s a rip-off artist. He gaffin’ people all the time. Let’s go.”

  The guy changed gears like a robot and they backed out, nearly plowing into the brick wall on the other side of the lot. Then they were careening down the street, Dwayne hissing, “Yo, chill this thing down, man, you get the cops on us.”

  The white guy slowed down to a crawl.

  1O:15 P.M.

  This part of San Pablo Avenue was mostly liquor stores; flyblown bars with the light bulbs burnt out in their signs; adult video stores where fag hustlers cruised the video galleries. Dwayne had worked the video stores doing the tease thing, as Essy called it. Pretending you were a fag, going into the booth with a real fag. He puts some tokens in the machine, some fag video comes on, he’s watching it and you’re kind of messing around with his dick with one hand, distracting him, making a lot of noise about it, then lifting his wallet, going through his pockets while his pants are down. Then you say, “Oh shit—I think somebody’s coming, they checkin’ the booths,” and you split. It takes them a minute to discover they are ripped off and—

  “There it is,” Dwayne said, now. “That hotel.”

  It was an old white wedge of a building, tall and narrow, on a sort of island where three streets almost intersected. The rest of the block was abandoned office space, rickety buildings from the early part of the twentieth century. Doc was standing in the doorway of the hotel, all in white as usual. A white suit, with a pink carnation. His black Jag was parked just a few feet from him where he could keep an eye on it.

  “Tha’s the dude,” Dwayne said. “Got him a Jaguar XKE, doing this shit.” Dwayne couldn’t keep the admiration out of his voice. That Doc had it together.

  “Pull up over there,” Dwayne said. “No, fuck, don’t — shit!”

  The guy cut across two lanes with a screeching right angle turn.

  “Shit!” Dwayne looked around as the guy parked. No cops. Lucked out again.

  “What’s your name?” the white guy asked.

  “Dwayne.”

  “I’m Jim. Okay…uh…” He looked through the window at Doc. Knew he couldn’t go over and buy the shit himself. Or thought he couldn’t, anyway. Probably could have. Probably didn’t need Dwayne.

  But Dwayne was banking on Jim White Guy not knowing that. And in fact, Dwayne could feel he was going to connect good here. Fuck Essy. Dwayne could grind his own business. Essy could come asking Dwayne for a start. (No way Essy was dead, that old man was getting brain damaged from drinking…Drinking kill you. . .)

  Jim went on, “What you want for this?”

  Dwayne said, “A dove.”

  “Half a dove.”

  So he knew what a dove was anyway. A forty dollar rock of crack.

  “Whatever you wanta do, hey homes, it’s okay. I’m not one of these gaffers like Hobey —”

  “Yeah, yeah.” The guy was getting a weary look as he took a chip of rock out from a jar, broke it in half in his teeth, put one of the halves in a pipe…Shit. The pipe was a pipe. It was a motherfucking briar pipe. Lighting it with a Bic. Sucking at it.

  Dwayne felt his scalp contract, his mouth go dry as he watched. Smelled the oily perfume and insecticide tang of the smoke. “You oughta get yourself a stem, man. What kind of fucking pipe is that?”

  “Only one they had left in the store. I’ll get a stem later. Here’s sixty. Don’t cruise on me, you’ll be fucking up a good thing.” The guy was involuntarily grinning as he said it.

  “Gimme a blast,” Dwayne said. The guy handed over the pipe and the Bic. Dwayne took a hit. The pipe worked shitty, but good enough for now, except it burnt his fingers having to hold the Bic upside down over the bowl. The blast feeling blossomed in him. It rushed through him and instantly he began to work on ways to get more. This guy, no telling how much money he had. Probably had a bank card. Maybe—

  “Go on,” Jim said, taking the pipe back.

  Dwayne folded the sixty bucks into his palm. “Keep that pipe low, watch for cops.” Still shaking a little from the blast, he got out and crossed to Doc, thinking: Play this guy carefully.

  Saturday Night, 10:50 P.M.

  Hobey almost went to sleep on the bus. Last time he did that he slept past his stop, took him half the night to get home. He was tired and when he was tired he noticed the creakiness in his bones more. Fuck that damn little nigger, that Dwayne, he be stepping in every time something should be Hobey’s coming down…Someone had left an Oakland Tribune on a seat. There were headlines on the metro section that said THREE MORE CRACK DEATHS: Coroner Doubts OD Cause.

  “Huh,” Hobey said. Some bad shit going around. That kind of shit, that’s why he didn’t smoke. Shit like that.

  The night sky was jet black, looking starless over the glaring anti-crime lights on Martin Luther King, Jr. Way when Hobey got off the last bus.

  He turned down Winston Street. There was action over to the parking lot of the 7-11, but Hobey didn’t care, he was too tired to fuck with trying to get in on it.

  Some of those piped-up motherfuckers shoot you, Uzi your guts out soon as look at you. Don’t be fucking with it when you’re weary.

  He stalked past a dirt lot where an old cracker-box house was almost demolished. Hobey used to work in demolition, before he got kicked out of the union, and this mess made him shake his head. The demolition had been subcontracted to some damn non-union crew! Just went after it with crowbars and a rented plow. It looked like a tornado had flattened the house at random, a scattered pile of plasterboard and timbers like a crazy snail shell for the slug of a rotten old mattress left in the house during demolition…

  Hobey stopped and stared.

  The mattress had moved. Had humped up, a little. By itself. Humping up so there was a dark little cave under it. Fringe of wet, mildewed mattress stuffing hanging down over the mattress cave. Like a gooey wig over the face that was coming into the light, showing, now, in the little cave. Something crawling out…

  Just some homeless nigger, Hobey thought.

  So why was he scared to look at it? Why did he feel, at the same time, scared to look away from it?

  The fella was about forty feet away, coming out on his hands and knees. All raggedy. Looked beat up, like he’d been tossed in there and stuff dumped on him.

  Maybe that mattress got dragged from somewhere else to cover him. The man ditched because they thought he was dead, most likely. Hobey had seen it before. Somebody ODs, the rockhouse doesn’t want the body around so they drag it to the nearest river or vacant lot, dump it, cover it up, let the bugs chew it up so nobody knows who it
is…

  Only they thought this guy was dead and he wasn’t.

  Should stay out of this. But he was feeling kind of low about himself, felt like doing for somebody, give him a lift. This man was lower down than he was…must be getting old.

  “You need some help, man. You lookin’ poorly,” Hobey said, picking his way through the debris toward the man. Didn’t recognize him. Black man, maybe was a teenager, not much older. Not standing up straight yet, hunched over. Something hanging off his head, maybe mattress stuff. . .

  Ten feet away. Hobey stopped. The man took a shaky step, bringing him into a streak of streetlight shine. Lifting his face toward Hobey.

  He had eye sockets full of ants.

  His eyes were gone. Ants, instead. Ants in the empty sockets, the ants moving all squiggling and searchingly the way ants do. Seeking and chewing, shiny and restless. No eyes. Ants.

  “My Lord, man…” Hobey breathed. “What they done to you...”

  Then he saw the spike. Big rusty metal spike from some concrete support of the house. Bent and blunt. Right through the man’s chest.

  Right through the motherfucker’s heart.

  Saturday Night, 10:55 P.M.

  White guy on a binge, that’s what he was. Didn’t smoke most days, but tonight he got mad at his wife or something, he go out on a binge, Dwayne thought. Not used to it, puts him farther out of his head. He’s righteous tweakin’.

  Dwayne watched Jim White Guy crossing the street. Walking to the bank machine. A little island of light in the dim street: a little high tech sweetness in the concrete and fake marble.

  Leaving the keys in the car. Leaving the keys with Dwayne. A complete stranger.

  Got to be tweaked to do that.

  Now Jim White Guy was standing at the machine, swaying, twitching a little, trying to figure out the buttons in that state. Probably end up leaving his card in the machine. Better check. When Jim Pale come back, they going to need that card. They’d already burned through the dove, and another one, and the guy was making his second run to the bank machine, and he’d left the keys in his Acura, and . . .

  The high was buzzing in Dwayne, but the buzz was fading. Time for another hit. He lit up some of the base he’d palmed when Jim White Guy wasn’t looking, sucked it up in the stem, the glass pipe he’d picked up on Telegraph Avenue.

  There. There it is. Spreading out in him, expanding through his nervous system. The blast. The rush spreading its wings. Wings made of flash-paper on fire. Going up, gone.

  Blasts were getting shorter, weaker. Need bigger hits.

  Maybe some black tar to go with it, ease the landing.

  Maybe take the car now.

  But then Jim White Guy was back, sliding in. “I got some money for that pussy, too.” The guy said. Thinking he was real street-smart, talking about pussy that way.

  They made a stop at Doc’s dope house, Dwayne breaking some of the dove off with a thumbnail, sliding it into his change pocket while he was walking around behind the Acura. Then Dwayne said, “Okay. Left at the corner. If you want ho’s.”

  It was coming together in Dwayne’s head. He knew a whore, Joleen, used an empty building up on Martin Luther King and Winston. That the opportunity,

  They found Joleen easy. She was a floppy-titted bitch with skinny legs, not getting much work, walking up and down the sidewalk in front of the condemned house. Across the street from the demolition lot where Samson Ramirez had dumped that OD case out of his rockhouse. Joleen, clutching a fake patent leather purse, was moving back and forth like a wind-up toy, marching on broken-down white Adidas gone gray from the street.

  Jim White Guy was so high, anything with tits looked good to him. Two minutes, and Dwayne had him out of his car, across the sidewalk, making a quick deal for Joleen. Acting like Joleen was going to do them both. Joleen was cheap. Didn’t work out of a house or a motel or anything, she couldn’t handle the overhead. Bitch just do it right there in your car or wherever was handy.

  Forty dollars for two. Another time, if he was trying to get some pussy from a toss up, he’d trade some smoke for it. But now he didn’t want to waste time in negotiations.

  “I got a place back here,” Joleen said, leading them up a walkway used for storing garbage cans. The side door had been knocked off its hinges long ago. They stepped through it, went down a stairs, into a furnace room. There was a pile of dirty blankets in the corner; gray light coming through a grimy window from the street.

  “Shit,” Jim White Guy said, whirling on Dwayne. “You setting me up to rob me? I got some friends, I’ll fucking have you killed—anything happens to me, they—”

  “Yo, chill out, we here for some pussy. Look, I got my dick out. I usin’ my dick to rob you?” Dwayne pulled out his dick, wagged it at Joleen, who dutifully went to her knees. Started sucking. Wouldn’t be able to get it hard, after all the base. Not Jim White Guy’s dick either. But the man was too piped-up to care. “I’ll take her from behind while she does you,” Jim White Guy said. But what he was doing was firing up his pipe.

  “All right, I hear you!” Dwayne said, and slapped Jim’s side in a companionable way; taking the Acura’s car keys from Jim White Guy’s jacket pocket as the white guy got his blast.

  “Suck the man’s dick, Joleen, he payin’ for this shit,” Dwayne said.

  Joleen silently shifted over to the white guy, unzipping his pants, taking his pasty, shriveled thing out in her hands.

  “You gonna give me a blast, honey?” she said, playing with his dick.

  The guy took out the pipe, put it in her mouth, flicked the Bic onto the glass bowl. Not noticing Dwayne moving off behind him.

  “Got to pee,” Dwayne muttered.

  Then he slipped out the door, out to the car. With luck, the white guy would be distracted for a few minutes, long enough for Dwayne to get away with the Acura.

  And it worked okay, as far as it went.

  Tuesday, 2:05 P.M., Fremont, California

  “Are you?” she said. Her tone matched her expression. Brittle.

  “Yeah,” Jim Diggins said, “I am. I’m sure.” Feeling like it was the truth. He was sure he’d never do cocaine again. How could he do cocaine again after all this? (But, yeah, he’d said the same thing before the last binge…)

  She was angrily taking clothes out of the dryer, putting them directly into her suitcase, hardly bothering to fold them. Jim wouldn’t have thought that you could take clothes out of a dryer angrily, but Patty could do anything angrily he’d discovered. She could brush her teeth angrily.

  “You’re passive-aggressive, you know,” she was saying. “This is just another way to express hostility. Getting stoned, getting robbed.”

  “That’s a pretty solipsistic idea of things,” Diggins said. Jim Diggins. Jim White Guy. Jim Pale.

  He was leaning against the concrete sink next to the washer. A cobweb hung down from one of the old two-by-fours that held up the kitchen floor, feather tickling the back of Diggins’ neck. He didn’t have the energy to move away from it.

  He felt like the core had been dug out of him. He might collapse inward, any second. His head fall into his chest. Fold up like the Scarecrow of Oz without straw.

  “Jim,” his wife was saying, “I’ve heard this crap three times before. You were sure, this time. No more, you said.” She was a thin woman, with long straight brown hair hanging to her bony ass. She had violet blue eyes that everyone thought were her best feature. She wore shorts, which maybe her legs were too skinny for. She looked especially pinched and taut when she was angry.

  “This time I’ll get counseling.”

  “You got counseling, Jim.”

  “I mean, therapy, serious therapy. Maybe even Schick Center or something.”

  “How about a car? Are they going to give you a car at the Schick center?”

  “We got insurance.”

  “We’ll still lose money and it’ll take a month to get the insurance payoff.”

  “Look—” He
was near tears, crushed by humiliation. “I know I’m a screw-up sometimes but most of the time I work hard for you and Donna…”

  “I don’t want to hear that speech either.” She carried the suitcase out of the laundry room to the stairs.

  Ten minutes later she was gone. She’d taken Donna, their four year old and she’d gone, her sister coming all the way from San Jose to pick her up. Jim doubted this was intended to be permanent. It was some kind of…therapy. Patty’s way of giving him shock treatment. It was like making him stand in a corner. More humiliation. What really hurt was not being able to hold it against her. Who could blame her? He’d had a drug relapse, and he’d done cocaine again—crack this time, for God’s sake. Crack. Which had a nasty street smell about it, the taint of crazies and thieves and whores. And he’d wallowed with all of those—with a thief, with the sleaziest kind of whore (could she have given him AIDS from an unfinished blowjob? Could he say for sure she hadn’t?), and a crazy. He was the crazy. He’d been totally out of his head. A miracle he’d only had his car stolen. Could have been robbed of his credit cards. Could have been murdered. Could have been killed, driving under the influence of the stuff.